The Night of Migration

The night when the Holy Prophet (PBUH) migrated from Makka to Medina, armed men of Quraish had siege his house and were awaiting him to go to sleep. Holy Prophet (PBUH) had been trusted with few valuable things. He told Ali (RA), who happened to be present there, so take his shawl and sleep in his bed, return those trusts in the morning and join him in Medina. Holy Prophet (PBUH) took a handful of dust, recited the following verse of Sura Yasin, blew on that dust and threw it towards the infidel swordsmen of Makka.

           “And, We have put a bar in front of them and a bar behind it and We have covered them up, so that they cannot see.”     (S: 36, V: 9)

God blinded the infidel swordsmen of Quraish and they couldn't see Holy Prophet (PBUH) passing through them. It is stated, when the pursuing people reached the Cave of Soor where Holy Prophet (PBUH) had taken shelter, a cactus tree grew and spread it branches to cover the mouth of the cave, a spider knitted its web and a pair of pigeons made a nest in the mouth of the cave, and there laid its eggs.

Spider makes its web using strings. Every string is made of four cords, which is developed from a thousand fibers, i.e. every string of a spider-web is made from four thousand fibers. The spider has four thousand excretory cells and each cell excretes one fiber. These cells are joined to four ducts, which culminate into one single opening in the tail of the spider to produce the strings of the web. These strings have some glue like substance on them. Spider, using these strings, weaves its web, which despite its ostensible fragility is strong enough to withstand the windy gusts of winds and storms.

Geometrically, spider web is hexagonal having each side equal to its radius. During weaving its web, spider crosses every string for five or six times and every time adds a strings with the previous one thus every string used in the web becomes strong enough to hold weight up to eight times of the spider's body weight. The spider can survive without food up to six months. It has eight eyes. It lays two thousand eggs, which it keeps in soil golden threads. It can produce the strings of different colors. Every string on the spider web is one ninth of the silk string.

The holy Quran refers to the spiders in this way:

“The parable of those, who take protectors other than God, is that of the spider that builds for itself a house, but truly the flimsiest of houses is the spider house; --- if they but knew.”      (Surah: 29, Verse: 41)

In the making of ordinary and apparently worthless things nature displays its creative potentials, wisdom and craftsmanship of highest order to leave the intellect bewildered. The holy Quran tells us: "And. We set forth these parables for the people but only, those understand them who have knowledge.”           (S: 29, V: 43)

Quran also tells us that God has granted authority to Adam to act as His vicegerent. It means Adam enjoys the authority to influence the earth as he may wish. In the wake of that authority all the existents of the earth are duty bound to obey the order commanded to them. At the time of his migration throwing of the handful of dust, after blowing on it, by the Holy Prophet (PBUH) indicates that he enjoyed complete command over all the elements of the earth here represented by dust. When he threw the dust the enemies, according to the holy statement of God, were blinded. This is indicative of the fact that all the creations of the earth, taking place because of the elements of the earth, also became active.

After his entering into the Cave of Soor, it was necessary that his enemies could not spot him and he could safely reach Medina to carry on the divine mission of preaching the Message of God. Since every creation of the world is composed of the elements of the earth therefore the elements and the system responsible for the growth of cactus, weaving of spider web and production of pigeons also became active.

When God granted His vicegerency to Adam and taught Adam all the sciences of His creative attributes. Adam could make use of those creative powers in his capacity of vicegerent and deputy of God on earth. Holy Prophet (PBUH) is the Principle Cause for the creation of this universe and the custodian of Knowledge of the Name of God: therefore, the growth of cactus, production of pigeon eggs and weaving of the spider web took effect.