for Allah is with us,” (Qur’an 9:40).

As for his “day”: when the Arab tribes turned apostate I said, “O Successor of the Messenger of Allah, win the people over and treat them gently.” He replied, “So I was formidable in the Age of Ignorance, yet I become faint-hearted in Islam? How am I supposed to win them—by fabricated poetry or invented speech?” He then recounted the rest of the incident.

This report is rejected (munkar). Al-Bayhaqī let it pass without comment and transmitted it through the chain: Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ṭālib→ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Rāsibī→Furāt ibn al-Sāʾib→Maymūn→Ḍabbah ibn Miḥṣan→ʿUmar. The flaw lies with that Rāsibī: he is unreliable and, in fact, unknown. Al-Khaṭīb mentioned him in his History and criticized him.

Al-Aswad ibn ʿĀmir said: Israel narrated to us, from al-Aswad, from Jundub, who related that Abū Bakr was with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in the cave when a stone struck his hand. He thereupon recited:
“You are but a finger that has bled;
all that you suffer is in Allah’s cause.”

Al-Aswad here is Ibn Qays; he heard from Jundub al-Bajalī, and both al-Bukhārī and Muslim cite him in their Ṣaḥīḥ collections.

Hammām reported: Thābit narrated to us from Anas that Abū Bakr told him, “I was with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in the cave. I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, if one of them were to glance down at his feet, he would see us.’ The Prophet ﷺ replied, ‘O Abū Bakr, what do you think of two men when Allah is the third with them?’” Agreed upon.

Ibn Lahīʿah narrated from Abū al-Aswad, from ʿUrwah, that they scoured every direction in search of the Prophet ﷺ. They sent word to those at the watering-places, ordering them to seize him and promising a great reward, until he continued: “The guide then took the two of them along the route south of Mecca and proceeded on with them …”