The Insight
When this verse was revealed, the Muslims in Mecca were a small, persecuted community with no army and no power. Some had already fled the country, and the rest were besieged and starved under the Quraysh boycott. Against that backdrop the Quran declared: «Soon their multitude will be routed, and they will turn their backs.» It was a specific, falsifiable prediction of a future military defeat of the most powerful people in Arabia, made when such an outcome seemed impossible. Years later, at the Battle of Badr in 624 CE, roughly 313 ill equipped Muslims faced a Quraysh army about three times their size, and the Quraysh were routed exactly as foretold. The companion Umar ibn al-Khattab later recalled that when this verse came down he wondered which host could ever be defeated, and then at Badr he watched the Quraysh flee while the Prophet recited this very verse. The prophecy was made in weakness, staked on the behaviour of a hostile enemy, and fulfilled to the letter.