The water carrier at Uhud

Umm Ammarah had come out to Uhud with a waterskin. That was the job: keep the fighters watered, drag the wounded back, do the work behind the line.

Then the line stopped existing. The archers came down off the hill, cavalry came round behind, and within minutes the Muslim army was scattered across the field and the Prophet ﷺ was exposed with a handful of people around him.

She put the waterskin down.

The reports have her taking up a sword, and a bow, and standing in the small group that stayed — and they have the Prophet ﷺ saying afterwards that he did not look left or right that day without seeing her fighting in front of him.

She took a deep wound on the shoulder that she carried for the rest of her life.

It is worth noticing what this episode is not. It is not a story about someone breaking a rule or making a point. She was doing the work she had come to do, the situation changed catastrophically, and she did what the situation now required — which is the same thing Talhah did that day, and Mus'ab, and the others who stayed.

She was, by then, a woman of Madinah with grown sons. She went out again after this, more than once. The last time was at Yamamah, decades later, where she lost a hand.