Was Muhammad a name or an appelation?

[The Cat]

Was Muhammad a name or an appelation?
The mysterious PBUH revealed (Sam Shamoun)
http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Menj/pbuh.htm
Koranic Muhammad is Jesus (Apple Pie)
http://www.faithfreedom.org./forum/viewtopic.php?t=27737

IS 'MUHAMMAD' A NAME?
by Mudarras Kadhir Gaznavi
General entrance... (A must see).
http://www.geocities.com/spenta_mainyu/index.htm
Muhammad: The Hagarene Messenger
http://www.geocities.com/spenta_mainyu_2/Muhammad.htm

Citing although not opening the quoting window...

IS 'MUHAMMAD' A NAME?
In the Thomas the Presbyter’s Chronicle the following is written on the Arab conquests after 636 A.D.: “On the front fly-leaf of a sixth-century Syriac manuscript containing the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark are scribbled a few lines about the Arab conquest, now very faint. The following entries are the most readable: In January (the people of) Hims took the word for their lives and many villages were ravaged by the killing of the Arabs of ‘Muhmd’ (Muhammad?) and many people were slain and (taken) prisoner from Galilee as far as Beth."

In the above quote the place called Hims is Emese, which is the town of Homs in Syria. We understand that the Hagarenes had carried out murder on a mass scale from Galilee to Beth (which is their usual practice).

Here is another quote from the same book: “In the year 945, indiction 7, on Friday 7 February (634) at the ninth hour, there was a battle between the Romans and tayyaye d-Mhmt [Arabs of Mhmt (Muhammad?)] in Palestine twelve miles east of Gaza. The Romans fled, leaving behind the patrician bryrdn, whom the Arabs killed. Some 4000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed there, Christians, Jews and Samaritans. The Arabs ravaged the whole region." (Thomas the Presbyter, Chronicle).

In these quotes the name of the leader of the group called Hagarenes-Ish'maelites is given as ‘Muhmd’ and ‘Mhmt’ As I have pointed out many times Arabic belongs to the family of Semitic languages, and it does not use the vowels. That is why the roots of these words should be ‘mhmd’ and ‘mhmt’. With the insertion of different vowels various pronunciations would be possible.

In addition to these possible references to the name of the Messenger there is another source in the Islamic literature which may be taken as an indication to his name. In this hadith supposedly from the first days of the Islamic ideology, and again supposedly originating from the Messenger himself, we get a glimpse of his psychology in that environment: “Kureysh slighted me in the past and avoided me. Kureysh called me ‘müzemmem’ (‘condemned’), but I am 'muhammad' (‘praised’).”

There have been some researchers who claimed that ‘Muhammad’ is not the name of the Messenger, or not even a name, but an appellation. We have Ahmad/Ahmed given as his name in the mevlûd (the nativity poem about the Messenger). Ahmad/Ahmed also has the meaning of ‘praised.’

A number of researchers including Leone Caetani have doubts about ‘Muhammad’ as the real name of the Messenger. But there are others who claim that his name is given as ‘Muhammad’ in genuine documents, the authenticity of which is established. One of these documents, called the Constitution of Medina is cited as the proof of his existence. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the signature there is his name, because in that region usage of appellations by and for the leaders was a common practice. Therefore the authors and editors of the codebook, who had done the creative writing may have preferred to refer to him not by name, but by an appellation. Moreover, the following points should never be forgotten:

The persons who were respected, who made great achievements, who became leaders in those ages were addressed not by their names but by appellations. That is why ‘Muhammad’s usage as an attribute, like ‘the anointed’ or ‘messiah’ is much more likely.

In the hadith quoted above the Messenger supposedly says that Kureysh had slighted by calling him ‘müzemmem’ (the ‘condemned’) but he was Muhammad (the ‘praised,’ the ‘beloved’). When these two words are presented and juxtaposed in a single sentence, and when one of the words (‘müzemmem’) is a label, the other one (‘muhammad’) must also be a label. Here, the Messenger does not say that his name is ‘Muhammad,’ but he uses that word as a label. It is like the title ‘messiah’=‘the anointed one.’ Therefore I believe that ‘Muhammad’ is not his name but a label, an appellation.

Secondly there must be a reason why the Kureysh slighted him, calling him ‘müzemmem.’

Kureysh would have called the Messenger ‘condemned’ only; If he was a foreigner, who had been accepted into the tribe as a result of an initiative by an eminent person, who is said to have been one of the Messenger’s relatives; If the Messenger was preaching something contrary to their beliefs. I believe that both circumstances were true. The Messenger was not a Kureyshi. He was a stranger. Also he has revealed a teaching contrary to the established convictions of the Kureysh.

The Shahadah...
The Messenger is presented as the absolute example that all Muslims should follow. If that’s so, then what is the reason behind the absence of the same emphasis in the earlier Arabic inscriptions, which are supposedly closer to the time he lived? But what is more peculiar is the absence of his name in the earlier texts. For instance, coming across the name of the Messenger is said to be impossible before Abd al Malik’s inscription in the Dome of the Rock in Yerushalim.

The scholars are puzzled by the lack of reference to the name of such an important person for Islam in the first years. They maintain that until caliph Abd al Malik had an inscription placed on the Dome of the Rock in 691 A.D. there were no references to the name of the Messenger. This shows that the ‘Muhammadan’ formula has been established in the time of Marwan the second, after 684 A.D. This formula is said to have become an official declaration overnight and was used in all the official documents and inscriptions.

Much more important than the appearance of that formula is the ‘confession of faith', which states that ‘Allah is the only god and Muhammad is his messenger.’ This formula has reportedly appeared for the first time with the Dome of the Rock inscription, which was put there upon orders by caliph Abd al Malik in 691 A.D. Could this inscription have been added even at a much later date, when the inner and outer ambulatories were rebuilt by El Zahir Lil’zaz in 1022 A.D.? (Alistair Duncan).

Hagarenes let the Jews, their allies, build a place of worship on the temple mount (where the Dome of the Rock is situated) when the Ish'maelite-Jewish alliance captured Yerushalim. In the light of this fact it would be right to think the ‘Muhammadan formula’ as a later addition. Understanding the importance of what I have said here is vital, because sixty years after the death of the Messenger the official Arab religious confession still did not include the Messenger in its established formula. Yehuda Nevo found that “In all the Arab religious institutions during the Sufyani period [661-684 A.D.] there is a complete absence of any reference to the Messenger.” What a revelation!

In fact both the supposed name ‘Muhammad’ and the Muhammadan formula, ‘Muhammad-un rasul Allah’, were reportedly occurred first on an Arab-Sassanian coin struck in Damascus in 690 A.D. This formula does not appear in any inscription dated before the year 691 A.D. This is said to be true whether the inscription is religious or mainly commemorative including a religious emphasis, according to Yehuda Nevo. The example of such an inscription is at the dam near the town of Ta’if, built by the caliph Mu’awiya in the 660s A.D. (Yehuda Nevo).

The ‘Muhammadan’ formula (‘Allah is the only god and Muhammad is his messenger’) only began to be used in the popular rock inscriptions of the central Negev sometime during the reign of Caliph Hisham (724-743 A.D.), about 30 years after its introduction by Abd al Malik. But even these formulae were not ‘muslim’ though they are ‘Muhammadan’.

The Arab religious texts dating from the first 150 years of the Arab rule (7th to 8th century A.D.) exhibited a monotheistic creed belonging to a certain body of sectarian literature with developed Judeo-Christian conceptions in a particular literary style. It contained no features specific to any known monotheistic religion.

This creed “is demonstrably not Islam, but a creed from which Islam could have developed.”

The Muslim texts only began to appear at the beginning of the 9th century (around 822 A.D.).

These texts coincide with the first written Kurans, as well as the first written traditional Muslim accounts.

The Muhammadan texts were not accepted promptly by the public even after they became official. For years after their appearance in state declarations, people continued to include non-Muhammadan legends in personal inscriptions, as well as routine chancery writings.

Therefore it seems that the Messenger was elevated to the position of a universal messenger of the supreme creator not in his lifetime, but during the later Marwanid period (after 684 A.D.).

The first Arabic papyrus, an Egyptian entaqion (a receipt for the paid taxes) written in both Greek and Arabic and dated to 642 A.D., is headed by the ‘Basmala’ (‘Bismillah-al Rahman-ur Rahîm’), yet it is neither Christian nor Muslim in character (The Muslim formula ‘with the name of god’/‘Bismillah’ is identical with the ‘beshem’ in the Samaritan scripture, therefore this ‘basmala’ could have been the ‘beshem’ of the Samaritans).


The Shahadah (1st pillar of Islam) is Shirk...
Al Mushrikoon exposed by AhmedBahgat
http://www.faithfreedom.org./forum/viewtopic.php?t=38763
The True Shahada (testimony)
http://www.submission.org/true-shahada.html
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Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

It's not even that clear which was the former name of 'The Praised One' (Muhammad), many say it was Kotham Halabi, the original name given to the baby by his mother Amina, but another name could have been Abul Kasem ibn Abdullah -see the IloveyouJESUS in....

Who is Worthy of All Praise?
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16056

If someone is worthy of praise in the Qur'an, it's way much more Jesus than Muhammad who asked to be forgiven for his sins and was induced into error by Satan in the well known Satanic Verses. This post by 'thunderbalt' underlines this so very well...