…And Qutham Is His Prophet

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Every day, Muslims worldwide affirm that “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” Yet one of the many curiosities from Islamic tradition is that fact that some Islamic traditions assert that Muhammad was originally not named Muhammad at all, but Qutham.

The late ninth-century Islamic historian Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Jabir al-Baladhuri, wrote that Muhammad’s grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, had named him for his son who had died as a child. The boy had died at the age of nine, whereupon Muhammad “experienced great anguish,” for “he had been dear to him [and] brought him joy.” So when the future prophet of Islam was, “Abd al-Muttalib named him ‘Qutam’, whereupon his mother Aminah informed him that she had been shown in a dream to name him ‘Muhammad’—thus, he named him ‘Muhammad.’”

Other Islamic scholars said the same thing, including Ibn al-Jawzi, a twelfth-century historian, another historian who flourished a century after that, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi, and the fifteenth-century scholar Ahmad ibn Ali al-Maqrizi. This tradition indirectly highlights the fact that Muhammad, that is, “The Praised One,” is more of a title than a proper name, and may indeed have been a title that became affixed in particular to the prophet of Islam, but which had previously been applied to others. In another tradition, one of the Jews, who are frequently cast as skeptics and opponents of Muhammad in Islamic tradition, asks Muhammad: “Why are you named Muhammad and Ahmad and Bashir [‘bearer of good news’] and Nadhir[‘warner’]?” He answered: “As for Muhammad, I am praised on the earth; as for Ahmad, I am more praised in heaven. As for Bashir, I give the good news of heaven to those who obey God. As for Nadhir, I warn those who disobey God of hellfire.”

All of these besides Muhammad are clearly titles, and “Muhammad” itself may be a title as well. If so, this could explain why the mentions of Muhammad in the seventh century don’t correspond to the traditional Islamic picture of the prophet: they were referring to someone else altogether.

Also, the use of a title as a proper name in itself suggests that the person so named is more myth than fact. Calling a man “The Praised One” is akin to calling someone “Superman”; even the name itself removes the person from the realm of ordinary human beings. Islamic tradition, of course, insists that Muhammad was anything but ordinary; in fact, he is the “excellent example” (Qur’an 33:21) for Muslims, to be emulated in all things. Yet at the same time, that tradition holds that there was nothing superhuman about Muhammad at all; he was a man like all other men, albeit chosen by Allah for a mission more exalted than that which was given to any other human being before or since. In any case, the very name “Muhammad” is consistent with the idea that he is not a historical figure, but a legend constructed in order to serve various purposes.

The “Qutham” traditions likewise suggest another possibility. The primary possibility, of course, is that Muhammad was a historical figure, born in 570 and really named Qutham, only to be renamed Muhammad in light of the voice that his mother heard. This, however, is unlikely in light of the scant mentions of Muhammad in the seventh century and the very late appearance of biographical material about him.

The second possibility, therefore, is that there was a figure named Qutham who was most likely a warrior or a prophet or both, and about whom various traditions circulated that were ultimately incorporated into the new Muhammad myth. As the Qutham stories may still have been circulating in their earlier, pre-Muhammad form, in order to explain the existence of the same stories in the Muhammad legend, the claim was invented that Qutham was Muhammad’s original name. Thus the still-circulating Qutham stories were neatly explained away: they were about Muhammad all along.

Yet they bear witness to the variability in even the earliest Islamic traditions. If Muhammad had always borne that name, why were the Qutham stories invented? And if Muhammad had initially had a different name, why has this detail completely vanished from standard Islamic accounts of his life?

The material in this article is adapted from the book Muhammad: A Critical Biography, in which you can find out a great deal more about the search for the real Muhammad.