Arab Converts to Islam in Pre-Islamic Mecca — Osman批注

The two motifs show up again in the accounts about Waraqa b. Nawfal b. Asad b. ‘Abd al-‘Uzza b. Qusayy, the paternal cousin of Muhammad’s wife Khadija, and a distant cousin of Muhammad himself. A great deal of the information we have on Waraqa serves a polemical purpose. From before the Prophet was even conceived, Waraqa’s sister is said to have offered herself tohis father ‘Abd Allah, because of a light that shone between his eyes, due to the sperm within him that would create Muhammad.18 Forty years later, Waraqa appears as a supporter of Muhammad’s Prophethood, a learned Christian who upon hearing about Muhammad’s first revelation, links him to the chain of Old Testament prophets and thus legitimates him. But as Sidney H. Griffith points out, “there is no reason to doubt the basic veracity of the reports that Waraqah b. Nawfal was a Christian, and that he was familiar with both the Torah and the Gospel, as Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham have said, even given the evidently apologetical character of the Sira, and its requirement to present Muhammad as affirmed by the scripture people.”19 Therefore, having acknowledged this polemical trend, we can still uncover kernels of information about Waraqa’s Christianity.

According to our sources, as soon as Khadija heard about Muhammad’s first revelation, she turned to Waraqa. Upon hearing the news, Waraqa exclaimed, “Holy, Holy! By Him in whose hand is the soul of Waraqa, if what you say is true, Khadija, there has come to him the greatest Namus — meaning by Namus, Gabriel — he who came to Moses. He is the Prophet of this people, so tell him to stand firm.”20 Despite Zuhri’s quote in Maqdisi that Waraqa died before the revelation, most writers, including Maqdisi himself, report some version of this previous account.21 Wahidi relates that Waraqa said to the Prophet, “If you hear the call then remain steadfast, so that you hear what it says to you.”22

早期阿拉伯基督徒对先知穆罕默德的态度，很像是把他当成了基督教的新先知：如果我们这一族出了圣贤，那是值得大家自豪的事情。