Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

Waraqah bin Nawfal lived for the most of his life in the pre-Islamic era. He died
shortly after the first revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. He refused paganism, the
bad habits of the Arabs such as killing girls, was searching for the truth, and was a
wised man and a Christian who believed in only one God. However, we don not find sufficient
information about him in the early Islamic literature. This led to the fact that he
did not become a well-known person. This is also the source of the speculations about
him aroused by orientalists.
On the other hand, the knowledge of Waraqah about the holy books of preIslamic
religions (Judaism, Christianism etc.) which we know from the Islamic literature
particularly hadiths on the first revelations to the Prophet is at first sight susceptible for
different interpretations. Starting from this, the orientalists claim that Waraqah influenced
on the Prophet’s teachings and personality. However, if we consider the information
on the subject as a whole and study the different variants of the hadith concerning
Waraqah, we can conclude that the conclusion of the orientalists on the subject comes
into being as a result of not studying the information in the literature as a whole. Beside
this, we can also consider the manner of the orientalists to the subject as an effort to
separate the teachings of the Prophet from the divine revelation.
In this article, we will mention firstly the view of the orientalists on the subject
and then we will analyze the information about Waraqah in the hadiths on the first revelation
to the Prophet from an Islamic point of view.