Lesley hazleton the first muslim the story of muhammad

opposite direction and hid out in a cave high on the side of Mount Thaur, overlooking the southbound caravan route to Yemen.

W hat happened in that cave would become a treasured part of Muslim lore. Caves have carried strong symbolic resonance for as long as there has been sacred legend. It might be tempting to say that it began with Plato’s “allegory of the cave” in The Republic, which explores the interplay between shadows and reality (or in contemporary terms, perhaps, between virtual and actual reality). But legends involving caves are so widespread that they seem to be universal. If you are Freudianly inclined, you could see the cave as a symbolic womb. In more metaphysical terms, it becomes a safe place in which one sleeps, dreams, and grows before emerging back into the world. Either way, it’s a place not merely of shelter, but of incubation.

For abu-Bakr, the cave on Mount Thaur would be a place of renewed faith as he worried that they would be discovered and Muhammad reassured him that God would protect them. For Muhammad, it would be a place of spiritual strengthening and further revelation. “They two were in the cave,” the Quran would say, “and the messenger said to his companion, ‘Sorrow not, for God is with us.’ Then God sent down his spirit upon the messenger, and strengthened him with forces you cannot