Ahmad

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Ahmad ( Arabic أحمد According to the Koran ( Sura 61 : 6) , DMG aḥmad 'highly praised') is the name of a messenger announced by Jesus of Nazareth (Arabic: ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ), who was equated by Islamic scholars with the Prophet Mohammed . On this basis, Ahmad has also become a popular male first name and family name among Muslims .

Linguistic

The word comes from the Arabic root h - m - d "to praise, praise", from which the names Muhammad, Hamīd and Mahmūd are formed. Ahmad is an elative of hamīd (“praiseworthy”) or mahmud (“praised”) and can thus be translated as “highly commendable” or “highly praised”.

Occurrence in the Koran

The decisive passage is sura 61: 6, where it says:

"Said Jesus, son of Mary:" O children of Israel, behold, I am sent by God to you to confirm what was the law before me, and to announce a messenger who cometh after me, whose name Ahmad is ( wa-smu-hū aḥmad ) ""

- Translation by Hartmut Bobzin

It is unclear whether aḥmad is to be understood here as a name, Aḥmad, or as an adjective, "highly commendable". William Montgomery Watt pointed out the rarity of this name in the time of Muhammad. In pre-Islamic Arabic the word appears only as part of compound predications for God. That is why many Koran translations give preference to an adjectival understanding. Rudi Paret , for example, translates the passage in question as: "and to proclaim an envoy with a laudable name". Evidence for the use of a proper name by Muslims can only be found several times after 740.

Identification with the Paraclete

In later centuries Muslim exegetes, such as Muqātil ibn Sulaimān and Ibn Ishāq (both died in 767), established a connection between Sura 61: 6 and the New Testament Joh 14.26  ELB , Joh 15.26  ELB , Joh 16.7  Paraklets announced by the ELB (Greek parakletos , Syrian menaḥḥemānā , Arabic al-fāraqlīṭ; German e.g. translatable as "Beistand"). Other biblical passages that contain derivatives of hmd in Arabic translation have also been interpreted in this sense. The identification of Muhammad and the Paraclete proclaimed in the NT served as an argument for the Muslims that the Koranic statement about Jesus was true and that Jesus had already predicted the coming of Muhammad.

Assuming the identification of Muhammad and Paraclete , which has been documented several times since around 772 AD , it becomes apparent that Ahmad was regarded as a synonym for Muhammad from this time on. So it is passed on explicitly z. B. Already Wahb ibn Munabbih († 728): the name of the prophet was Aḥmad and Muḥammad.

Name bearer

First name

family name

Caliphs of the Ahmadiyya

Others

variants

Ahmed , Ahmet (Turkish), Achmed, Achmet.

See also

  • Ahmadi ( family name derived from Ahmad ).

literature

  • Geoffrey Parrinder: Jesus in the Qurʾān , London: Faber & Faber 1977, 96-100.
  • Uri Rubin: The eye of the beholder , the life of Muhammad as viewed by the early Muslims, a textual analysis, Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press 1995 (Studies in late antiquity and early Islam 5), ISBN 0-87850-110-X , 22f
  • Uri Rubin: Art. Aḥmad, Name of the Prophet , in: Encyclopaedia of Islam , 3rd A., Brill 2008.
  • William Montgomery Watt: His name is Ahmad (cxi, 6) , Muslim World 43 (1953), 110-7.
  • Josef van Ess : Theology and Society in the 2nd and 3rd Century Hijra: A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam , Berlin: de Gruyter, Vol. 3 (1992), 25f and Vol. 4 (1997), 633f

Web links

Wiktionary: Ahmad  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d J. Schacht: Aḥmad , in: Encyclopaedia of Islam , 2. A.
  2. ↑ U. Rubin, lc
  3. ↑ Examples in U. Rubin, lc
  4. ↑ Cf. Olaf H. Schumann: The Christ of the Muslims. Christological Aspects in Arabic-Islamic Literature. Gütersloh 1975. pp. 35-37.
  5. ↑ Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya: Hidāyat al-ḥayārā fī ajwibat al-yahūd wa-l-naṣārā . Ed. ʿIṣām Fāris al-Ḥarastānī, Beirut 1994, 199; here n. Rubin, lc; there is a report on further traditions