Allah made each Group look few in the Eye of the Other

Mujahid said, "In a dream, Allah showed the Prophet the enemy as few. The Prophet conveyed this news to his Companions and their resolve strengthened." Similar was said by Ibn Ishaq and several others. Allah said,

وَلَوْ أَرَاكَهُمْ كَثِيراً لَّفَشِلْتُمْ

In the last verse, along with this, it has also been mentioned: وَيُقَلِّلُكُمْ فِي أَعْيُنِهِمْ (and reduced your number in their eyes - 44). This could also mean that Muslims were, in reality, already few in number, thus, what was shown to disbelievers was their number as it was. And it could also mean that the number shown to them was much reduced than it really was - as it appears in many narrations that Abu Jahl on seeing the Muslim 'army' said to his compatriots: The number of these people does not seem to be any more than the number who would eat a camel as their daily ration. In Arabia of those days, the measure used to find out the number of men in an army was to first guess the number of animals slaughtered for their meals. One camel was understood to be sufficient to feed one hundred people. Right here on this battle site of Badr, the Holy Prophet ﷺ in his effort to find out the number of men in the army of the Quraysh of Makkah, had asked some local people: How many camels are slaughtered in their army camp every day? The answer given to him was: Ten camels daily. This led him to estimate the number of men in their army as being one thousand. In short, the total number of Muslims was shown as being one hundred in the sight of Abu Jahl. Here too, the wisdom of showing them in a reduced number was that the awe of Muslims may not so adversely affect the hearts of disbelievers ahead of the actual confrontation that they bolt from the battlefield itself.

Special Note