“What is the matter with you—woe unto you?” They demanded, and he related to them what he had seen. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Had he advanced any farther, the angels would have torn him apart, limb by limb.”
In the same way, on the night of the Hijrah the Messenger of Allah ﷺ left while they had stationed men along his path and set guards at his door so that he could not depart; the moment they caught sight of him they intended to kill him. He ordered ʿAlī to sleep in his bed, then came out while they were sitting there, sprinkling dust on the head of each one of them and saying, “Shāhat al-wujūh (1)”—“May the faces be disgraced.” He went out and they did not see him until he and Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq had reached the cave of Thawr, as we have set forth in detail in the Sīrah.
We have likewise mentioned that a spider spun its web across the entrance of the cave so that Allah might conceal his whereabouts from them. In the Ṣaḥīḥ it is related that Abū Bakr said, “O Messenger of Allah, if any one of them were to look down at the place of his own feet he would see us.” He replied, “O Abū Bakr, what do you think of two when Allah is the third of them?” (2)
A poet has said about this:
“The weaving of David could not have shielded the cave’s companion—
all the glory belonged to the spider.”
He was likewise screened and protected from Suraqah ibn Mālik ibn Juʿshum when the latter pursued them: the legs of Suraqah’s horse repeatedly sank into the ground until he asked the Prophet for a guarantee of safety, as has been related earlier in the account of the Hijrah.
Ibn Ḥāmid noted in his book that, just as Abraham (peace be upon him) laid his son down to be sacrificed in full submission to Allah’s command, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ offered up his own life to be killed on the Day of Uḥud and on other occasions, so that the enemy did to him what they did—wounding his head and breaking his lower right incisor—as we have already detailed in the Sīrah.
He then said: They say that Abraham (peace be upon him) was cast by his people into the fire and Allah made it coolness and safety for him. We reply: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was granted something similar. When he arrived at Khaybar, a Jewish woman there poisoned him; yet Allah turned that poison inside him into coolness and safety until the end of his life—even though poison, once it settles in the stomach, burns just as fire burns.
I say: The ḥadīth about this has already been cited in the account of the conquest of Khaybar. It is supported by the fact that Bishr ibn al-Barāʾ ibn Maʿrūr died quickly from that poisoned lamb, while its foreleg informed the Messenger of Allah ﷺ of what had been hidden in it. He had taken a bite from it, and the poison was concentrated in that piece because they knew he ﷺ preferred the foreleg. Yet, by Allah’s permission, the poison that entered his body did him no harm until his appointed time arrived; at that moment he said that he was feeling the pain of that poison from that single mouthful.
We have also mentioned—under the biography of Khālid ibn al-Walīd al-Makhzūmī, the conqueror of Syria—that he was once brought poison, which he swallowed in the presence of the enemy to strike fear into them, and it did him no harm—may Allah be pleased with him.
Abū Nuʿaym then said: If it is said, “Abraham confuted Nimrod with the proof of his prophethood and dumbfounded him,”—Allah, Exalted is He, says, “So the disbeliever was confounded…” [Al-Baqarah 2:258]