The Eye at Uhud
At the Battle of Uhud (3 AH / 625 CE), Qatada ibn al-Nu’man was struck in the eye by an arrow. The narration, transmitted in multiple versions, states that his eye fell from its socket — or was so severely damaged that it hung out of the socket.
He came to the Prophet. The Prophet took the eye in his hand, replaced it in the socket, and pressed it back. By the accounts that preserve this story, the eye healed — and Qatada reportedly said this eye became the better of his two eyes afterward, the one with sharper vision.
The Nature of Prophetic Miracles
The eye-restoration at Uhud belongs to a category of Prophetic miracle (mu’jiza) that is specific to a named person with a witnessed outcome. It differs from the general miracle of the Quran (an ongoing textual reality) by being a bounded event: a particular wound, a particular man, a particular moment.
The scholars who preserve such narrations note their transmission paths carefully — these are reports that require scrutiny precisely because of their extraordinary claims, and their survival in the tradition indicates multiple early witnesses.
Beyond the Eye
Qatada ibn al-Nu’man was present at the major early battles and was a transmitter of hadith. His half-brother Abu Sa’id al-Khudri became one of the most prolific transmitters in the Companion generation. The family thus contributed both a physical miracle-story and a substantial hadith transmission stream to Islamic tradition.
See also: Seerah Badr, Seerah Uhud, Seerah Sad Ibn Muadh, Seerah Abdallah Ibn Masud, Seerah Khabbab Ibn Al Aratt