The witnesses of the expectation

This page does not present prophetic texts, but witnesses: people of the Book who were awaiting a prophet, and some of whom recognized him ﷺ.

Waraqa ibn Nawfal, the first witness

The account is Aisha’s, in the first book of al-Bukhari’s Sahih. At Hira, the angel commands the Prophet ﷺ: “Read.” He returns, his heart trembling, to Khadija and tells her: “I feared for myself.” She then takes him to her cousin, Waraqa ibn Nawfal (Bukhari 3).

Waraqa had become a Christian before Islam. He wrote Hebrew, and copied from the Gospel, in Hebrew, whatever God willed that he should copy. He was a very old man, and had gone blind (Bukhari 3).

He listens to the account of the Prophet ﷺ, and replies: “This is the Namus that God sent down upon Moses. Would that I were young in that time! Would that I might be alive when your people drive you out!” The Prophet ﷺ is astonished: “Will they drive me out, then?” Waraqa: “Yes. Never has a man brought what you bring without being met with enmity. If your day reaches me, I will support you with a strong support.” Then Waraqa soon died, and the revelation was interrupted (Bukhari 3).

What this testimony establishes

A man of the Book recognizes the revelation. The Namus is the angel that God sent to Moses (research file v1, part 2). Waraqa speaks neither of a poet nor of a soothsayer: he places what happened at Hira in the line of Moses. Ali Ataie cites a version in which the Namus comes to the Prophet ﷺ “as he came to Moses” (Ataie, p. 84, note 105), and hears in it the echo of the promise made to Moses in Deuteronomy: “a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee” (Deuteronomy 18:18; Ataie, lecture).

He foretells the exile on the very first day. The announcement is made on the day of the first revelation, before any preaching, and the Prophet ﷺ himself is astonished by it. The Hijra came thirteen years later, according to the view Ibn Kathir holds to be the soundest (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, II, 290). The Qur’an recalls it: “when the disbelievers drove him out” (9:40). And the Prophet ﷺ would say to Mecca: “Had I not been driven out of you, I would not have left” (Tirmidhi 3925).

“Waraqa is a witness of the Muslim tradition, not a text older than Islam.” That is true, and it is for this reason that the site ranks him among the witnesses, not among the prophecies. But a witness is judged by his transmission: Aisha reports it, Urwa has it from her, al-Zuhri from Urwa, and al-Bukhari places it at the beginning of his collection (Bukhari 3). That the collection is later than the events changes nothing: a word authentically transmitted keeps its weight (research file v1, part 4).

The monk Bahira, with his limits

Ibn Ishaq reports that as a boy the Prophet ﷺ went with his uncle Abu Talib in a caravan to Syria. At Bosra a monk, Bahira, lived in his cell; he held the knowledge of the Christians from a book handed down from monk to monk. He saw a cloud shading the boy and the branches of a tree bending over him. He invited the caravan to a meal, watched the boy, questioned him, and found between his shoulders the seal of prophethood, as his book described it. He then said to Abu Talib: “Go back with your brother’s son to his country, and guard him against the Jews” (Ibn Hisham, I, 180-182).

Al-Tirmidhi gives another version, on the authority of Abu Musa al-Ash’ari. The monk takes the boy by the hand: “This is the master of the worlds, the messenger of the Lord of the worlds, whom God will send as a mercy to the worlds.” Here the danger comes from the Romans, seven of whom arrive in search of the awaited prophet (Tirmidhi 3620).

This account does not have the strength of Waraqa’s:

• Ibn Ishaq gives it “as they claim”, without a chain of transmission (Ibn Hisham, I, 180; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 246).
• Al-Tirmidhi grades his version “good, singular”: he knows it by a single route only. The Darussalam edition grades it weak (Tirmidhi 3620; research file v1, part 2).
• Ibn Kathir notes that Abu Musa, who arrived in 7 AH, reports what he did not see, and that the end of the account, in which Abu Bakr sends Bilal with the boy, is strange: Abu Bakr was then nine or ten years old, and Bilal younger still (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 248). Ibn Hajar holds this sentence to have been inserted from another hadith (al-Salihi, II, 144).
• There is no agreement either on the boy’s age, nine or twelve, or on the monk: a Christian for Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Kathir, a rabbi of Tayma according to al-Zuhri (al-Salihi, II, 140, 145; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 249).

“Bahira was the teacher of the Prophet ﷺ.” That is what a Christian version of the story makes of him (research file v1, part 2). The sources that report it know of a single meeting, the length of a meal, with a boy whom his uncle, on the monk’s advice, at once takes home (Ibn Hisham, I, 180-183). What the revelation brought is not learned from any book: that is the subject of page B.

What remains is the core of both versions: a man of the Book recognizes in the boy the signs that his book described. The site gives it as a tradition, with its limits.

The Jews of Yathrib: they foretold him ﷺ

The exegetes connect this verse with the Jews of Yathrib, the future Medina (research file v1, part 2). They were awaiting a prophet who would give them victory; according to Abu l-Aliya, they denied him ﷺ out of jealousy towards the Arabs (Ameri, p. 36).

Ibn Ishaq tells the other side. The Jews lived in Yathrib among the Aws and the Khazraj, polytheists who had fought them; being people of the Book and of learning, they would tell them at every quarrel: “A prophet is about to be sent, his time is near; we will follow him, and with him we will kill you as Ad and Iram were killed.” When the Prophet ﷺ met six men of the Khazraj at Aqaba and called them to God, they said to one another: “This is indeed the prophet with whom the Jews threatened you: do not let them reach him before you!” They believed, and went back to Yathrib to speak of him (Ibn Hisham, I, 428-429). This is how the Sira explains the swift adherence of the people of Medina (research file v1, part 2).

Ibn Ishaq has this account from Asim ibn Umar ibn Qatada, who has it “from elders of his people” whom he does not name (Ibn Hisham, I, 428). And the link with 2:89 comes from the exegetes, not from the verse. But the verse itself is categorical: they recognized what came to them, then denied it.

Some followed him. Abd Allah ibn Salam, a rabbi of Medina, embraced Islam in the first year (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, II, 352); the Prophet ﷺ told the Jews that they knew him to be the messenger of God, and a group of them believed (Ameri, p. 45-46). Most refused. The pact reported by Ibn Ishaq made them “a community with the believers”: “to the Jews their religion, and to the Muslims theirs” (Ibn Hisham, I, 503). Yet the Qaynuqa were “the first Jews to break” it (Ibn Hisham, II, 47), and then the Nadir and the Qurayza “made war”, says Ibn Umar (Bukhari 4028).

A Christian emperor

During the truce of Hudaybiya, the emperor Heraclius questions Abu Sufyan, then an enemy of the Prophet ﷺ, about his lineage, his truthfulness, and what he commands. Then he concludes: “I knew that he was about to appear, but I did not think that he would be one of you. If I were with him, I would wash his feet” (Bukhari 7). When he proposed to the great men of the Romans that they pledge allegiance to this prophet, they bolted for the doors like wild asses, and he drew back (Bukhari 7; al-Saqqar, p. 7-8).

What these witnesses establish

Before Jesus, at Qumran, people awaited the prophet of Deuteronomy 18 (Ameri, p. 34). In the days of Jesus, John the Baptist was asked: “Art thou that prophet?” (John 1:21). In the time of the Prophet ﷺ, a Christian of Mecca, Jews of Medina and a Christian emperor were still waiting.

Waraqa and Heraclius are in al-Bukhari; Bahira and the Jews of Yathrib come with their limits. None of them replaces the texts: together, they show that the expectation was real, and that it came to rest on one man.

How this page connects to the others

• The prophet like Moses, and “Art thou that prophet?”: page 2, A prophet like Moses.
• The portrait “in the Torah”, transmitted by Abd Allah ibn Amr and Abd Allah ibn Salam: page 3, The Servant of Kedar.
• John bar Penkaye and Bahya ben Asher, witnesses who came after Islam: page 1, The prayer of Abraham.
• What the Prophet ﷺ could not learn from any book: page B, What the Qur’an reveals with no biblical counterpart.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
• Bible: King James Version.
• Waraqa ibn Nawfal: Bukhari 3.
• Heraclius: Bukhari 7.
• The monk of Bosra: Tirmidhi 3620.
• The Nadir and the Qurayza: Bukhari 4028.
• “Had I not been driven out of you”: Tirmidhi 3925.
• Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-nabawiyya, ed. al-Saqqa, al-Abyari and Shalabi, al-Babi al-Halabi, 1955, I, 180-182, 428-429, 503; II, 47.
• Ibn Kathir, al-Sira al-nabawiyya, ed. Mustafa Abd al-Wahid, Dar al-Ma’rifa, 1976, I, 246-249; II, 290.
• Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, Uyun al-athar, Dar al-Qalam, 1993, II, 352.
• Al-Salihi al-Shami, Subul al-huda wa-l-rashad, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1993, II, 140-145.
• Sami Ameri, al-Bishara bi-nabi al-islam fi kutub al-yahud wa-l-nasara, Takween, 2nd ed., 2021, p. 34-36, 45-46.
• Ali J. Ataie, Finding Muhammad in the New Testament, master’s thesis, Graduate Theological Union, 2011, p. 84; lecture at Zaytuna College.
• Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, p. 7-8.
• Research file Annonces du Prophète ﷺ, v1.0, 14 October 2026, parts 2 and 4.