Some of the Muhajirun, who had lost old Meccan relatives and friends in the conflict, saw that their kinsmen among the captives were sad. This feeling was strong amongst the women. Then this rebuke, came:—

0 ye who believe, verily, in your wives and your children ye have an enemy;¹ wherefore, beware of them. Sura At-Taghabun (lxiv) 14.

In the week following the battle of Badr, two of the most prominent offenders, Abu 'Afak and Ibn 'Auf were assassinated. Men then criticized in private, but that was very soon forbidden:—

Hast thou not marked those who have been forbidden secret talk, and return to what they have been forbidden, and talk privately with wickedness and hate and disobedience toward the Apostle. Sura Al-Mujadilah (lviii) 9.

The victory was gained by an inferior over a superior force, and the Quraish lost men who had been the Prophet's determined foes, and so the idea of divine interposition seemed quite a natural explanation

It placed the Prophet in a position of security for the time, and enabled him, as we have seen, to carry out his policy, more fully developed after the battle of Badr, of entirely subduing the Jewish tribes for whose aid he had now no further need. The value of the spoils and of the ransoms of the prisoners proved most acceptable to the Muhajirun who thus became independent of the Ansar. Prisoners who were too poor to pay a ransom in money did it by giving writing lessons, an art now fully appreciated by Muhammad. [Sura Al-Baqarah (ii) 282-3] The victory also made a great impression on the Bedouin tribes and caused them to become more inclined to come to terms with one who stood before them as a leader of a victorious military force. For the Prophet they cared little, but a successful warrior claimed their attention and respect. The claim to divine support when a victory was gained also increased the prestige and power of the Prophet; but it was a dangerous assertion to make, or policy to follow, for when defeat came, the conclusion naturally drawn was that God had forsaken him. This is what actually occurred later on.

About a year after the battle of Badr, the Quraish smarting under the defeat determined to make another great effort to overcome their opponents.. They collected a comparatively large army and in the spring of A.D. 625 drew near to Madina. The immediate reason for this was that Muhammad continued his plundering expeditions. The merchants of Mecca found that their trade was in great danger. The ordinary western route to Syria was unsafe and so they sent a rich caravan by the eastern one.