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Bahira ( ar, بَحِيرَىٰ, syc, ܒܚܝܪܐ) was an Assyrian, likely
Nestorian Nestorianism is a term used in Christian theology and Church history to refer to several mutually related but doctrinarily distinct sets of teachings. The first meaning of the term is related to the original teachings of Christian theologian ...
monk from the tribe of Abd al-Qays who, according to Islamic religion, foretold to the adolescent
Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد;  570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mon ...
his future as a
prophet In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the ...
.Abel, A.
Baḥīrā
. ''
Encyclopaedia of Islam The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published ...
'', Second edition. Brill. Brill Online, 2007
986 Year 986 ( CMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * August 17 – Battle of the Gates of Trajan: Emperor Basil II leads a Byz ...
Watt, W. Montgomery (1964).
Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman
', p. 1-2. Oxford University Press.
His name derives from the
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
''bḥīrā'', meaning “tested (by God) and approved”.Roggema, Barbara.
Baḥīrā
" Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Edited by: Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Brill Online, 2014
011 The following is a list of different international call prefixes that need to be dialled when placing an international telephone call from different countries. Countries by international prefix Countries using optional carrier selection code ...
Accessed July 12, 2014.
Christian tradition later appropriated him as Sergius.


Islamic tradition

The story of Muhammad's encounter with Bahira occurs in the works of the early
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
historians
Ibn Hisham Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām ibn Ayyūb al-Ḥimyarī al-Muʿāfirī al-Baṣrī ( ar, أبو محمد عبدالملك بن هشام ابن أيوب الحميري المعافري البصري; died 7 May 833), or Ibn Hisham, e ...
(died 833 CE),
Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Sa‘d ibn Manī‘ al-Baṣrī al-Hāshimī or simply Ibn Sa'd ( ar, ابن سعد) and nicknamed ''Scribe of Waqidi'' (''Katib al-Waqidi''), was a scholar and Arabian biographer. Ibn Sa'd was born in 784/785 C ...
(784–855), and
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari ( ar, أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري), more commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Muslim historian and scholar from Amol, Tabaristan. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari ...
(839–923), whose versions differ in some details. The young Muhammad, then either nine or twelve years old, met Bahira in
Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
while travelling with a
Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow v ...
n
caravan Caravan or caravans may refer to: Transport and travel *Caravan (travellers), a group of travellers journeying together **Caravanserai, a place where a caravan could stop *Camel train, a convoy using camels as pack animals *Convoy, a group of veh ...
, accompanying his uncle
Abu Talib ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib ( ar, أَبُو طَالِب بن عَبْد ٱلْمُطَّلِب '; ) was the leader of Banu Hashim, a clan of the Qurayshi tribe of Mecca in the Hejazi region of the Arabian Peninsula. He was an uncle of the Isl ...
. When the caravan passed by his cell, the monk invited the merchants to a feast. They accepted the invitation, leaving the boy to guard the camel. Bahira, however, insisted that everyone in the caravan should come to him. Then a miraculous occurrence indicated to the monk that Muhammad would become a prophet. When he sat under a tree, its branches moved to shade him, the movement of a cloud kept shadowing Muhammad regardless of the time of the day drew Bahira's attention. The monk revealed his visions of Muhammad's future to the boy's uncle (Abu Talib), warning him to preserve the child from the
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
(in Ibn Sa'd's version) or from the Byzantines (in al-Tabari's version). Both Ibn Sa'd and al-Tabari write that Bahira found the announcement of the coming of Muhammad in the original, unadulterated
gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
, which he possessed. A similar tradition is attributed to
Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn Ubaydullah ibn Abdullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri ( ar, محمد بن مسلم بن عبید الله بن عبد الله بن شهاب الزهری, translit=Muḥammad ibn Muslim ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh b. S̲h̲i ...
in the works of the early ahadith compiler ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-San‘ani, in which the unnamed figure is a rabbi of
Tayma Tayma ( Taymanitic: , vocalized as: ; ar, تيماء, translit=Taymāʾ) or Tema Teman/Tyeman (Habakkuk 3:3) is a large oasis with a long history of settlement, located in northwestern Saudi Arabia at the point where the trade route between ...
instead of a Christian Syrian monk. The rabbi warns Abu Talib against bringing Muhammad to Syria, as he predicts that Muhammad will be killed by the Syrian Jews if they proceed. In response, Abu Talib returned to Mecca with his nephew. Later Islamic writers gave the rabbi the name of Bahira.


Christian tradition

The names and religious affiliations of the monk vary in different Christian sources. For example,
John of Damascus John of Damascus ( ar, يوحنا الدمشقي, Yūḥanna ad-Dimashqī; gr, Ἰωάννης ὁ Δαμασκηνός, Ioánnēs ho Damaskēnós, ; la, Ioannes Damascenus) or John Damascene was a Christian monk, priest, hymnographer, and ...
(d.749), a Christian writer, states that Muhammad "having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an
Arian Arianism ( grc-x-koine, Ἀρειανισμός, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God ...
monk, devised his own heresy."St. John of Damascus's Critique of Islam
from ''Writings'', by St John of Damascus (''De Haeresibus'', chap. 101), ''The Fathers of the Church'' vol. 37 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), pp. 153–160.
For Abd-al-Masih al-Kindi, who calls him Sergius and writes that he later called himself
Nestorius Nestorius (; in grc, Νεστόριος; 386 – 451) was the Archbishop of Constantinople from 10 April 428 to August 431. A Christian theologian, several of his teachings in the fields of Christology and Mariology were seen as contr ...
, Bahira was a Nasorean, a group usually conflated with the
Nestorians Nestorianism is a term used in Christian theology and Church history to refer to several mutually related but doctrinarily distinct sets of teachings. The first meaning of the term is related to the original teachings of Christian theologian N ...
. After the 9th century, Byzantine polemicists refer to him as Baeira or Pakhyras, both being derivatives of the name Bahira, and describe him as an iconoclast. Sometimes Bahira is called a Syrian Jacobite or an
Arian Arianism ( grc-x-koine, Ἀρειανισμός, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God ...
. The early Christian polemical biographies of Muhammad share in claiming that any supposed illiteracy of Muhammad did not imply that he received religious instruction solely from the
angel Gabriel In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብር� ...
, and often identified Bahira as a secret, religious teacher to Muhammad.


Gallery


Bibliography

* Maulana Muhammad Ali (2002), ''The Holy Qur'an: Arabic Text with English Translation and Commentary'', New Addition, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’ at Islam Lahore Inc., Ohio, USA. * Osman Kartal (2009), ''The Prophet’s Scribe '' Athena Press, London (a novel) * B. Roggema, ''The Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā. Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam'' (The History of Christian-Muslim Relations. Texts and Studies 9; 2008) (includes editions, translations and further references). * K. Szilágyi, ''Muhammad and the Monk: The Making of the Christian Baḥīrā Legend'',
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam ''Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of classical Islam, Islamic religious thought, Arabic language and literature, the origins of Islamic institutions, and the interaction between Islam ...
34 (2008), in press. * Abel, A. (1935) “L'Apocalypse de Bahira et la notion islamique du Mahdi” Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientale III, 1–12. Alija Ramos, M. * *


References


External links


The Byzantine Church Of Buhaira En Bosra Syria
{{Authority control 6th-century Christian monks 6th-century Arabs Life of Muhammad Precursors in religion Christianity and Islam Christian apologetics