The Quran

قَد كانَ لَكُم آيَةٌ في فِئَتَينِ التَقَتا ۖ فِئَةٌ تُقاتِلُ في سَبيلِ اللَّهِ وَأُخرىٰ كافِرَةٌ يَرَونَهُم مِثلَيهِم رَأيَ العَينِ ۚ وَاللَّهُ يُؤَيِّدُ بِنَصرِهِ مَن يَشاءُ ۗ إِنَّ في ذٰلِكَ لَعِبرَةً لِأُولِي الأَبصارِ

Muhammad Asad

You have already had a sign in the two hosts that met in battle, one host fighting in God's cause and the other denying Him; with their own eyes [the former] saw the others as twice their own number: but God strengthens with His succour whom He wills. In this, behold, there is indeed a lesson for all who have eyes to see.¹

It is generally assumed that this is an allusion to the battle of Badr, in the third week of Ramadan, 2H., in which three hundred and odd poorly-equipped Muslims, led by the Prophet, utterly routed a well-armed Meccan force numbering nearly one thousand men, seven hundred camels and one hundred horses; it was the first open battle between the pagan Quraysh and the young Muslim community of Medina. According to some commentators, however (e.g., Manar III, 234), the above Qur'anic passage has a general import and alludes to an occurrence often witnessed in history - namely, the victory of a numerically weak and ill-equipped group of people, filled with a burning belief in the righteousness of their cause, over a materially and numerically superior enemy lacking a similar conviction. The fact that in this Qur'an-verse the believers are spoken of as being faced by an enemy "twice their number" (while at the battle of Badr the pagan Quraysh were more than three times the number of the Muslims) lends great plausibility to this explanation - and particularly so in view of the allusion, in the next verse, to material riches and worldly power.