The Prophet Muhammad, St. John Damascene, and a Mysterious Monk

Monastery of Bahira in Bosra, Syria. Muslims believe this to be the site where the young Muhammad met with the Christian monk Bahira. (Image credit: Dosseman, Wikimedia Commons)

In the traditional accounts of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, we find a number of important interactions between the founder of Islam and Christians, e.g., Khadija’s cousin Waraqa or the deputation of Najrani Christians in Medina. However, what makes Muhammad’s meeting with a mysterious Christian monk named Bahira all the more intriguing is the fact that it is also mentioned by one of the greatest saints of the Christian Church, John Damascene.

According to Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, when Muhammad was a child, he had an auspicious meeting with the Christian monk Bahira. The future prophet had been on a merchant caravan led by his beloved uncle, Abu Talib, when they stopped outside of Bahira’s cell in Bosra, Syria. Even though the Arab merchants were pagans, the monk Bahira showed them hospitality by preparing a meal for them. However, the monk had a bit of an ulterior motive, for he was expecting a very special guest. Yet when Bahira served the meal, he sensed that the guest of honour was missing and asked the Arabs if everyone was present. Totally unaware that they were only the supporting cast in this scene, the men informed Bahira that all were present except a boy (Muhammad) who was outside keeping watch over the merchandise. The monk (who was probably facepalming at this point) asked that they bring him in. After speaking with Muhammad, Bahira discerned a mark on the boy’s back, between his shoulder blades, which he declared to be none other than the “seal of prophethood” mentioned in his Christian book. However, it is not clear what book is being referred to here, as the Bible does not mention any such mark. On the other hand, the Qurʾan would later call Muhammad the “Seal of the Prophets” (33:40), but it does not say anything about a physical mark either. In The Emergence of Islam: Classical Tradition in Contemporary Perspective, Gabriel Said Reynolds suggests that Ibn Ishaq is referring to what he would have believed to have been the authentic, but lost, Gospel given to Jesus.  

The story of the monk Bahira is also mentioned by St. John Damascene in his eighth-century treatise on Islam, The Heresy of the Ishmaelites, which is found in The Fount of Knowledge. For those who do not know, John was born in Muslim-ruled Damascus just over forty years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death and is even believed to have served as a high-ranking official in the Umayyad Caliphate before becoming a monk in Palestine. So seeing that the meeting between Muhammad and Bahira is supposed to have taken place in John’s home country of Syria, it is no wonder that he would make mention of it in his short treatise on Islam. 

Greek Orthodox icon of St. John Damascene (Image credit: Orthodox Church in America)

Now, John does not say much about the meeting between Bahira and Muhammad, and, in fact, does not even provide a name for the monk. While Ibn Ishaq does not give Bahira’s Christian sect, John claims that the monk had been an Arian. In fact, he says that the monk had influenced Muhammad before the birth of Islam. This is likely because the saint believed that Islam’s rejection of the Trinity and Jesus’s divinity were the result of the earlier heresy of Arianism. However, it is worth noting that Islamic and Arian Christology do differ significantly from one another, as Arians believed Jesus to be divine by God’s grace, while Muslims believe him to be only human. Nevertheless, it seems that because John saw both theologies as denigrating Jesus’s true nature, he drew a parallel between them. 

While some scholars today would argue that the story of Muhammad’s meeting with Bahira is simply a late literary invention intended to help buttress the Muslim belief that the Bible predicts Muhammad—hence, the monk recognizing Muhammad’s prophethood based on his Christian book— perhaps this mysterious figure really did exist and was visited by the future prophet. John Damascene seems to accept that such a meeting took place, although he probably would not have accepted all the details of it as being authentic. While John takes a negative view of the episode (so we won’t be getting our kumbaya moment today) the fact that he speaks of it all, and at such an early stage in Islam, is a brilliant example of how Eastern Christianity and early Islam have a clear religious and cultural connection.