The Night They Came to Kill Him

Quraysh saw the believers leaving for a city with walls and warriors and understood the danger. They gathered in their council hall, Dar an-Nadwah, to decide the fate of the man they could no longer intimidate. Exile would only let him build his power elsewhere; imprisonment would not hold. The plan they settled on, attributed to Iblis in the form of an old man, was murder by committee: a strong young man from every clan would strike together, so the blood would be spread among all of them and Banu Hashim could not avenge it against one.

Revelation warned him ﷺ, and Allah gave him leave to emigrate. He went to Abu Bakr (ra), who had readied two mounts in hope of exactly this companionship, and told him: Allah has permitted me to leave. Abu Bakr wept with joy: the companionship, O Messenger of Allah? Yes. The Qur'an would honour that night forever: when the disbelievers plotted against you to imprison you or kill you or expel you... and when the two were in the cave, when he said to his companion: do not grieve, Allah is with us.

That night the assassins gathered at his door. He gave Ali ibn Abi Talib (ra) a task of stunning trust and courage: sleep in my bed wrapped in my cloak, and return the deposits the people of Makkah left with me. Even now, plotting his murder, Quraysh trusted al-Amin with their valuables; and even now, he made sure those trusts were returned. Ali (ra) lay in the bed of a man marked for death, and the would-be killers watched the cloaked figure, certain of their prey.

Then the Prophet ﷺ walked out through them. He took a handful of dust, let it fall over their heads as he passed reciting from Surah Ya-Sin, and Allah took their sight from him. When someone came and found them still waiting, they rushed the bed to find Ali (ra), and knew they had been passed by. The most wanted man in Arabia had stepped over the threshold of his own assassination and was already gone into the night with Abu Bakr (ra).