Seerah Series | Part 1: Specialties of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) | Shaykh Yasir Qadhi

And of the ahadith that the Prophet mentioned his names, he said, ‘An Jubair ibn Mut’im, [ra] in Sahih Muslim, the Prophet said, “I have a number of names.” (so the Prophet is telling us he has a number of names). He said, Ana Muhammad, I am Muhammad, Wa ana Ahmad…and I am Ahmad, wa anal Mahee…and I am al Mahee (of his name is Al Mahee. And he explained: Al Mahee is the one for whom, Allāh erases kufr)…wa anal Haashir…of his names is al Hashir…people will be resurrected (hashara yahshuru means to be resurrected) on my footsteps, or meaning, after me. Wa anal ‘Aaqib…of his names is ‘Aaqib. And he said al ‘Aaqib is the one who has no Prophet after me. “Wa ana nabiiyyur rahmah,” he said. I am the nabiyyur rahmah. That is one of my names. Nabbiyyur Rahmah. “Wa anna nabiyy ut tawbah.” And I am the nabi of repentance. “Wa anal muqaffah.” And he is the muqaffah. And the qaffah, we’re going to explain what this means, but the one who has come after all, or the one who comes consequently, the one who comes at the end of a long chain. That is al muqaffah. “Wa anna nabiyyul malaahim.” And I am the Prophet of mallaahim. We’re going to explain all of these names one by one.

So, the most common names of the Prophet and the two that the Qurʾān explicitly mentions, the Qurʾān mentions many adjectives, but it only mentions two nouns. The Qurʾān mentions many adjectives for the Prophet . From those adjectives, we can derive names. So nabbiyyur rahmah, we can derive it from the Qurʾān. Rahmatal lil ‘alameen. This is a description, an adjective. But in terms of proper nouns, or in terms of nouns, there are two names that are mentioned, and these names are Muhammad and Ahmad. The name Muhammad is mentioned four times in the Qurʾān. And the name Ahmad is mentioned a few times as well, if my memory serves me correctly, it is 2 or 3 times, the name Ahmad is mentioned, and every time it is mentioned, it is mentioned from the tongue of Jesus Christ. The only time Ahmad is mentioned is from the tongue of Jesus Christ. “Nabi mim ba’ad ismuhu Ahmad.” Isa ibn Maryam says that I am going to tell you of a Prophet coming after me, his name is Ahmad.

Both Muhammad and Ahmad come from Hamida. Yahmadu hamdan. And hamd means to praise, but not any type of praise. Hamd is, the first word of the Qurʾān, alḥamdulillāh, and hamd means to praise, not in return for some favor given to you (because that is shukr – somebody does something for you, you praise them back, that is shukr…That is a praise bi muqaabil. It’s something that you give and take…you give me some money, I say “thank you” or “you’re a generous man” this is not called hamd. This is shukr. Because you have given something back in return for something he’s given you). Hamd is higher than shukr.  Shukr is a transaction in a way, even though it is something that is good. Higher than shukr is hamd, and hamd is the highest form of praise. Hamd is the praise that is given because of the inherent characteristics in the object that you’re praising. Not because he’s done anything for you, you’re giving back to him. Because he deserves to be praised for who he is. Hamd is for an object of perfection, an object that is worthy of being praised. Regardless of what he’s done or hasn’t done, he is worthy of being shown praise. And so the Prophet has two names, and his two most common names come from the root which describes praise, why?

Because Allāh has praised him and the angels have praised him, and the people on earth have praised him, and all the prophets have praised him and every single one of mankind praises him directly or indirectly. As for praising him directly, these are the Muslims, they praise him directly. And as for praising him indirectly, then the characteristics and qualities that he has come with are characteristics and qualities of perfection, so even those who reject him by the tongue, they must admit and they must praise the qualities that he came with: mercy, tenderness, rahmah, shafaqa, it doesn’t matter even if their tongues deny his prophethood, they must praise the qualities that are in him. So he is worthy of praise from all of humanity. And therefore, the Prophet is praised in the heavens and in the earth. He is praised in the previous ummam and in the present ummam. He is praised in this dunya and in the ākhirah. This is the ultimate praise. There is no human being who has ever been praised or is praised at this point in time or who shall continue to be praised more than our Prophet [saws]. And think about it: no millisecond occurs on this earth except that there are, not millions, not tens of millions…hundreds of millions of people around the globe praising this one person …either by sending durood and salat and salam or by giving a khutbah or lecture or by saying the salah (cause you cannot pray any salah, you cannot pray any rakah, except that what do you do in that rakah? Allāhuma salli ‘ala Muhammad wa ‘ala aali Muhammad…). Think about it. There is no second on earth that goes by except that hundreds of millions of people are praising this one human being. There is no person who is more praised than our Prophet .

And the ultimate praise that he will be given by humanity – of course the ultimate praise he is given is by Allāh. As for humanity, the ultimate praise he will be given will be the praise that he will be given on Yawm al Qiyamah, on the Day of Judgment. On that day, all kaafirs will know the truth of Islam. You cannot deny Allāh when you are seeing  Yawm’l-Qiyāmah. Muslim and non-Muslim, they will know the truth…of course it is too late to believe in the truth, but they will know it.

So when they recognize the truth, the people will all go to Adam (the hadith is in Bukhari and Muslim) They will all go to Adam and they will say “Oh Adam, you are our father and Allāh created you with His hands and Allāh blew His ruh into you. Do you not see the situation your children are in? Why don’t you go to Allāh and beg for forgiveness? Why don’t you go to Allāh and beg Him to start the reckoning so that we can move on?”

So Adam will make an excuse and he will say, “I committed a sin that I should not have done,” meaning I’m not worthy to go and ask Allāh ‘azza wa jall. I committed a sin and I’m worried about myself. “Nafsee nafsee.” Go to another person, go to Nuh . And so humanity at large will go to the Prophet Nuh, and the same request. And the Prophet Nuh will say “I made a mistake which I should not have done. Allāh told me not to ask anybody to be saved and I asked Him to save my son and I disobeyed Him and I’m worried about myself. “Nafsee nafsee.” Go to somebody else, go to Ibrahim.” They will go to Ibrahim . Ibrahim will say the same thing, that “I made three lies” (even though they were not lies but he’s so worried). He says, “I made three lies and I’m worried about those lies on the Day of Judgment” what are these three lies? Number one, he said “the big idol did it,”…this is da’wah, it’s not even a lie.  But he’s so worried now “I don’t know, maybe Allāh will call me to task.” Number two he said “I’m sick,” when his people went out of the town he said “Inee saqeem. I’m sick, I don’t want to go with you…let me stay here” why? Because he wanted to destroy the idols. And number three, he called Sarah, his wife, he said “Sarah is my sister,” (meaning, in Islam, because the king was about to kill him) so he said she’s my sister, I’m not husband-wife, we are sister and brother, meaning, and he meant sister in Islam because he wanted to save his life. These three things he was so worried about, he said “I’m too scared, go to somebody else. Go to Musa .”

And Musa will also make an excuse. He will say, “I killed somebody in anger [even though it was an accident]. I killed somebody in anger, I’m worried, so go to somebody else.” They will go to Isa. Isa will also say, “I’m not worthy, go to somebody else,” and so all of mankind will come to the Prophet Muhammad . All of mankind. Muslim and kaafir. And they will beg the Prophet to intercede, to be a representative, to be a messenger from them to Allāh and to be an intercessor and to be a representative. So they choose one human being to be a representative, to go in front of Allāh and plead for all of humanity. Plead what? To begin  Yawm’l-Qiyāmah, because the qiyāmah is taking too long, and they are getting so worried, so, if you like, the punishment is increasing because qiyāmah itself is 50,000 years. Qiyāmah itself is a type of punishment and the people who have rejected Allāh, they will be so exasperated by qiyāmah. They will say “whatever comes, let it come, let’s just get rid of this day. Let’s move on to whatever it is. The tension is too much.“

So they will beg Rasūlullāh to go in front of Allāh and ask Allāh to begin the reckoning. And so the Prophet will say, “This is my job, this is my responsibility,” and so he will then go in front of Allāh and because he will be the representative, all of humanity will praise him and he will be given the praiseworthy station which is called Al Maqaam al Mahmood. This is Al Maqaam al Mahmood. This is exactly what Al Maqaam al Mahmood is. What does Al Maqaam al Mahmood mean? Al Maqaam al Mahmood means the station, maqaam, the rank that is mahmood. What is mahmood? From hamd. It is the one that is praised. Everyone will praise him. No human being will be left except that he will thank the Prophet and be thankful to him and praise him for the Al Maqaam al Mahmood. Allāh will lift him up to the maqaam al mahmood. The angels will praise him. Humanity will praise him. Every single being in existence will praise the Prophet at that point in time. It is Al Maqaam al Mahmood. And because it is Al Maqaam al Mahmood, who better than it be given to the one who is Muhammad and the one who is Ahmad? Al Maqaam al Mahmood is for Muhammad and it is for Ahmad, and both of them mean the one who is ultimately praised.

What is the difference between Muhammad and Ahmad? Muhammad, for those of you who are learning Arabic, is mufa’al and hammada yuhammidu tahmeed and Muhammad means that he is being given continuous praise. Continuously, time after time, praise after praise. So Muhammad is for the quantity of praise, that every single point in time he is being praised. And as we already said, from the beginning of time up until our time, till the Day of Judgment, on the Day of Judgment, after the Day of Judgment, all of the time our Prophet will be praised. So Muhammad is for continuity. Muhammad is for quantity.

And as for Ahmad, ‘ala waznee af’aal, Ahmad means that he is being given the best type of praise, the highest quality of praise. So Ahmad is for quality, Muhammad is for quantity, and the both are combined in our Rasul , that he is worthy of being praised the highest way that any human being can be praised. Of course the praise that we give to Allāh is a different type of praise and that is a divine praise. But the highest praise for any human being is for our Prophet and the most continuous praise is for our Prophet . So Muhammad is for quantity, Ahmad is for quality, and the both of them are combined in our Rasul who will be given Al Maqaam al Mahmood which is the praiseworthy station

Now, as for the issue of why is it that the prophet Musa predicted our Rasul with the name of Muhammad as the Qurʾān says, and Isa predicted our Rasul with the name of Ahmad, the famous scholar Ibn al Qayyim said that the wisdom behind this is that the largest ummah after our ummah is that of the Jews, the Bani Israel. They are the largest ummah of real followers. That is because the Christians, as we believe, the majority of them, they took a different path, that of Paul and his version of Christianity. The original Christians, the true believers of Isa were few in number and their religion died out very quickly (as you know Constantine and all of these, they changed the religion and it became a trinity, it became a divine nature of Jesus Christ, of course Isa never preached this from our perspective) So the prophet Musa , his people were the largest ummah of true Muslims, after our ummah. And therefore they were given quantity, because they have quantity. So they are told the name that is conducive, that is fitting with them because they’re a large quantity. As for the prophet Isa , his followers were few, his disciples were few and the people who truly followed the actual message of Jesus Christ were not that many, but they were great in quality. The disciples and those who followed them, they were persecuted, they were tortured, the pagan Romans killed them. They put them in front of the lions, they combed their bones and their flesh with combs of iron, just like you see in the movies, these tortures, and this was given to the early Christians, the real Christians, meaning the followers of Jesus Christ: the true followers of Isa ibn Maryam. They were few in number but they were truly devoted and righteous and so for them, they were given the name Ahmad because they were people of quality, and they were told that our Rasul would be the one who is worthy of the best quality of praise. And so Muhammad and Ahmad are both his names.