In the Qur'an it is called Yawm al-Furgan, 'the Day of Decision". In Ramadan of the second year of the Prophet's emigration (March 624) two armies met at Badr, a remote spot in the Arabian desert. A small but well-equipped army of about one thousand pagans was defeated by just 313 Muslims, ill-equipped but divinely aided and spiritually unconquerable. To quote the author: To outsiders, ‘this would have seemed no more than a minor skirmish between desert tribes Neither the combatants, nor the location, nor the outcome had the least importance in the eyes of the wider world, where in those days the two major powers were the Persian and Byzantine empires.' And yet there is ample reason to consider Badr the most momentous battle in history. Had the leading Muslims not survived, there would have been little prospect of Islam, the true religion, surviving. The world's history would have been unimaginably different. [ The above description is from the publisher]