From Abū al-Ḥakam al-Tanūkhī, who said:
Whenever a child was born among Quraysh they would hand him over to some women of Quraysh until dawn, and the women would turn an earthen pot upside-down over him.(1) When the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, was born, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib entrusted him to a group of women who did the same. At daybreak they returned to find that the pot had split in two and fallen away, and that he lay with eyes wide open, his gaze fixed upon the sky. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib came, and they said, “We have never seen a newborn like him. The pot had broken apart from him, and we found him looking heavenward with his eyes open.”
He replied, “Watch over him, for I hope he will have a great destiny or attain abundant good.”
On the seventh day he sacrificed an animal on the child’s behalf and invited the clans of Quraysh. After they had eaten they asked, “O ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, this son of yours for whose sake you have honored us—what have you named him?”
He said, “I have named him Muḥammad.”
They said, “Have you turned away from the names customary among his family?”
He answered, “I wanted God to praise him in Heaven and His creation to praise him on earth.”
The linguists state that anyone who combines noble qualities is called Muḥammad, as one of them versified:
To you—may you be spared reproach—I urged my camel on,
Toward the noble, eminent, generous, lauded one.
Some scholars said: God inspired them to name him Muḥammad because of the praiseworthy traits he possessed, so that the name and the deed would meet, and the designation would mirror the one designated in both form and meaning, just as his uncle Abū Ṭālib said—and the line is also attributed to Ḥassān:
From His own Name He fashioned one for him to exalt him;
The Lord of the Throne is Maḥmūd, and this one is Muḥammad.
We shall, God willing, mention his names, his outward qualities and pure character, the proofs of his prophethood, and the virtues of his station at the end of this biography.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī said: “Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥāfiẓ informed us; Abū al-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb narrated to us; Aḥmad ibn Shaybān al-Ramli narrated to us; Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥalabī narrated to us; al-Haytham ibn Jamīl narrated to us; Zuhayr narrated to us, from Muḥārib ibn Dithār, from ʿAmr ibn Yathribī, from al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, who said:
‘I said, O Messenger of Allah, a sign of your prophethood that led me to embrace your religion was that I saw you in the cradle cooing to the moon and pointing at it with your finger; wherever you pointed, it inclined.’
He replied, ‘Indeed, I used to converse with it and it conversed with me, distracting me from crying, and I would hear …’