The chapter
Quraysh convened in Dar an-Nadwa and engineered the perfect murder: one young swordsman from every clan, striking together, so the blood would be divided across all Quraysh and Banu Hashim could not retaliate. The Qur'an preserves the record of that meeting: "And when those who disbelieved plotted against you, to confine you, or kill you, or expel you. They plot, and Allah plots; and Allah is the best of plotters."
That night Ali slept in the Prophet's bed under his green cloak, a decoy with no guarantee of morning, while the Prophet ﷺ walked out through the assembled assassins. He went not north toward Yathrib but south, to the cave of Thawr, with Abu Bakr, who had wept with joy when told he would be the companion of the journey, and had two camels ready.
Three nights in the cave, served in secret by Abu Bakr's own household: Asma carrying food by night, tearing her waistband in two to tie the provisions, earning forever the name Dhat an-Nitaqayn, She of the Two Belts; her brother Abdullah gathering the day's intelligence in Makkah and reporting after dark; the freedman Amir ibn Fuhayrah grazing sheep over the tracks. Quraysh posted a hundred camels' bounty and swept the hills. The searchers came so close that Abu Bakr whispered: "If one of them looks at his feet, he will see us." The answer became a verse recited until the end of time: "Do not grieve; indeed Allah is with us." And in Bukhari's wording the Prophet pressed it further: "What do you think, O Abu Bakr, of two, Allah is their third?"
The famous spider web and nesting dove at the cave mouth belong to later, weaker reports; the Qur'an credits the concealment to something better: "Allah sent down His tranquility upon him and supported him with soldiers you did not see." The Codex records the popular image and its grading honestly, the miracle needs no embroidery.
They rode out along the coast road with the guide Abdullah ibn Urayqit, a trusted non-Muslim, hired for competence, pursued by Suraqah, welcomed by Quba. The calendar of Islam does not begin with the birth of the Prophet or the first revelation; Umar's caliphate fixed it here, at the Hijrah, the moment faith became a community with an address, and two men in a cave outweighed a city of swords.