, one of the names of the Prophet Muḥammad and a proper name used by Muslims. Formally, it is the elative of Maḥmūd or Ḥamīd and means “more, or most, worthy of praise”, or, less probably, of Ḥāmid, in which case it would mean "praising [God] to a higher, or the highest, degree”. As a proper name it is, however, distinct from the other, etymologically connected forms, including the name Muḥammad. It occurs occasionally, and less frequently than Muḥammad, among the pre-Islamic Arabs. In the Ṣafāi…

, Ḳurʾānic name for Jesus; the Ḳurʾān refers to him in 15 sūras and devotes to him 93 verses which are the foundation for Muslim Christology. Various traditions, containing additions drawn from the apocryphal gospels of the childhood of Jesus, or from mystic Christian literature, have enriched this Christology and, in certain respects, brought it nearer to the Christian Christology. Islamo-Christian polemic has tended through the years to harden the positions; most of these positions have become classic and are to be found unchanged in present day Muslim writers. I. Etymology of the…