Mohammad Ahmadimanesh
Abstract
The etymology of the name Muḥammad and its pre-Islamic background has always been a challenge for researchers, and there are questions about it, including whether the name Moḥammad ...
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The etymology of the name Muḥammad and its pre-Islamic background has always been a challenge for researchers, and there are questions about it, including whether the name Moḥammad was derived from a non-Arabic name or word? And was Moḥammad a common name before the emergence of Islam or did it have special religious and even prophetic connotations? Linguistic, intertextual studies and archeological findings offer various possibilities in this area. In the Islamic tradition, at least since the second century, the name of Moḥammad has been connected with the word "Paraclete" (Fāraqliṭ) in the Gospel of John. Of course, there have been doubts about the authenticity of this accounts, but the transfer of the word paraclete from Greek or through the mediation of Aramaic languages to the Arabian Peninsula is still a possible option. We find a word with the same root as the name of Moḥammad, which traces of it can be found in Islamic writings, especially the story of Abraha. Islamic sources also say that the Arabs thought that a prophet named Muḥammad would come in the future, and they mention several people named Moḥammad, whose reports contain some kind of religious and prophetic implications. The important challenge in relation to these evidences is their authenticity and dating and then the analysis of the internal relationship between them. In this article, the collection of these evidences has been examined and especially the most important Islamic evidences have been critically evaluated. With the examined evidence, it can be said that in the pre-Islamic peninsula, the names derived from the root ḥ-m-d had religious connotations. However, about the connection between ḥ-m-d's roots and Fāraqliṭ, for the time being, we have to limit ourselves to speculation.
