—in His cloud. He carved out for me a name from among His own: the Lord of the Throne is al-Maḥmūd, while I am Muḥammad. He promised to favor me with the Pond and with al-Kawthar, and to make me the first to intercede and the first whose intercession will be accepted. Then He caused me to appear in the finest generation of my community—those who abound in praising Allah, who command what is right and forbid what is wrong.”
Ibn ʿAbbās said: Ḥassān ibn Thābit composed the following verses about the Prophet ﷺ:
Before that hour you were already pure, veiled in sheltered shade,
in a trust kept safe the day the leaves were sewn for covering.
You then abode in the earth—no human being yet,
not a drop of seed, nor a clinging clot.
Purified, you boarded the Ark
when drowning bridled Nasr and all his folk.
You were conveyed from loins to wombs:
when one age passed, another dawned.
The Prophet ﷺ said, “May Allah have mercy on Ḥassān.” ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib added, “By the Lord of the Kaʿbah, Paradise is assured for Ḥassān.”
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir then remarked, “This ḥadīth is exceedingly strange.” I say: rather, it is exceedingly repudiated; what is reliably preserved is that these lines belong to al-ʿAbbās, may Allah be pleased with him. He (Ibn ʿAsākir) cited them through the narration of Abū al-Sukayn Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Ṭāʾī, as mentioned above.
I further note: some people claim that they are by al-ʿAbbās ibn Mirdās al-Sulamī. Allah knows best.
Note: Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ writes in his book al-Shifāʾ: “As for the name Aḥmad that appears in the earlier scriptures and with which the prophets gave glad tidings, Allah—in His wisdom—prevented anyone else from bearing it or being called by it before him, lest those of weak understanding be confused or fall into doubt. The same is true of Muḥammad: no one among the Arabs or others was given that name until shortly before his advent and birth, when news spread that a prophet named Muḥammad would be sent. A small number of Arabs therefore named their sons Muḥammad, hoping that one of them might be that prophet—yet Allah knows best where He places His message” (Q 6:124). Among them was Muḥammad ibn Uḥayḥa ibn al-Julāḥ.