I seek for him the protection of the One
from the evil of every jealous eye;
in every stretch of land I travel
and from every servant who would guide my way—
let none but You be my guide—
he is the servant of the All-Praiseworthy, the Glorious,
until I behold him, leader of the witnessing throngs.
The sign of this is that a light will go forth with him, filling the palaces of Bosra in the land of Syria. When he is born, name him Muḥammad, for in the Torah his name is Aḥmad—those in heaven and those on earth praise him—and in the Gospel his name is Aḥmad—those in heaven and those on earth praise him—while in the Qur’an his name is Muḥammad.
Taken together, these reports show that when she first conceived him—peace and blessings be upon him—it was as though a light issued from her, illuminating the palaces of Syria; and when she delivered him she saw with her own eyes the fulfillment of what she had been shown before. Allah knows best.
Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (6) said: “Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar—namely al-Wāqidī—informed us: Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim narrated to us from al-Zuhrī.”
Al-Wāqidī also said: “Mūsā ibn ʿUbaydah narrated to us from his brother, and Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẓī; and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar al-Zuhrī related to me from his aunt Umm Bakr bint al-Miswar, from her father; and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Madanī and Ziyād ibn Ḥashraj narrated to us from Abū Wajzah; and Maʿmar narrated to us from Ibn Abī Najīḥ, from Mujāhid; and he also narrated to us…"
(1) In manuscript h it reads “with the addition of a yāʾ of connection after the rhyme letter in all the lines”; the prosodists call it wasl (connection) because it unites the vowel on the broken rhyme letter, as in al-Wafi by al-Tabrizi (p. 225).
(2) “al-barr” is the opposite of al-baḥr, and ʿāhid is the active participle of ʿahida (“to pursue”), meaning “he pursues him with envy wherever he goes, as if never separated from his envy.” Sharḥ al-Mawhibah (1/129). In Ibn Isḥaq’s Sīrah it appears as ʿāmid.
(3) “al-rāʾid” denotes one who takes the lead in something reprehensible—that is, a wrong-doer. yarūdu means “he seeks it for him.” ghayr rāʾid (“not seeking for him”) is a kenāyah (“it brings him no benefit whatsoever”). See al-Lisān (s.v. rud) and Sharḥ al-Mawāhib (1/129). The variant in brackets recorded by al-Dalāʾil, Ibn ʿAsākir and in Sīrah Ibn Isḥaq—“nuzūl ghayr zāʾid”—is a scribal error.
(4) In h, Sīrah Ibn Isḥaq, al-Dalāʾil and Ibn ʿAsākir it reads “ḥattā arāhu qad atā al-mashāhid.” In the Ṣ-copy of al-Dalāʾil it reads “ḥattā arāhu qāʾid qad atā al-mashāhid,” as if combining both transmissions; the scribe retained what preserves the metre and sense. It is notable that the last two lines belong to mashṭūr al-rajaz (the split rajaz metre) and the remainder to manhūkahu.
(5) Al-Bayhaqī added the gloss: “and I named it thus.”
(6) See al-Ṭabaqāt (vol. 1: pp. 101–102).
(7) The letter ḥāʾ in this report indicates a shift in the isnād (chain of transmission).
(8) In h it appears as al-Murnī (also read al-Madanī); in Ṭabaqāt it is al-Muzannī, the reading confirmed by al-Ṭabaqāt. I found no biographical entry for him.