Origin of the Name ‘Islam’

Last updated: April 9th, 2025 at 10:32 am · Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes

Origins

Origins of name Islam and its derivative, Muslim, are obscure. The Qur’an uses the word aslamah to describe the sacrifice of Ibrahim.¹ It gives a hint to Watt, an English historian, that Islam would have been a derivative of aslama and would have meant ‘resignation or submission to Allah’.²

The latest archaeological research is pointing the origin of the word ‘Islam’ in another direction.  A favour which pagan Arabs used to ask from their deities was ‘slm’ (سَلم).  It meant security/protection and is used in this sense in this Safaitic inscription: “By ‘nm son of ‘ḍr’l son of Bdr and the day became advanced [the sun’s heat was intense] so, O ‘Lt, [grant] security (slm).”³  Another Safaitic inscription elaborates ‘slm’ further: “By Ḥrbn….. and he pastured the sheep and he feared the enemy and so O Lt [grant] security (slm).”⁴

Pagan Arabs could ask for any favour from their deities.  After studying petitions made to different deities in pre-Islamic Arab inscriptions, Bennett has concluded that any deity could be asked to respond to any type of prayer, but requests for security (slm) are five times more frequent than any other request.⁵

It is quite possible that the root of the word ‘Islam’ was ‘slm’.  It would have meant the Muslims have been granted slm (protection/security) from Allah.

Earliest mention

Ibn Ishaq, one of the earliest historian of Islam, who published his Sirat Rasul Allah in 750 CE, calls this religion ‘Islam’.⁶  The Qur’an also uses world ‘Islam’ to describe it.⁷  Qur’an doesn’t use its derivative ‘Muslim’ but uses its pleural Muslimīn and Muslimūn.

Earliest datable use of the term Islam by Muslims themselves is the inscription on the Dome of Rock, which was written in 691 CE.⁸

Hanifiyah

Prophet Muhammad himself is reported to have said that the religion he took to Medina was the Hanifiyah (622 CE).⁹  Similarly, Muhammad bin Maslamah, an early Muslim from Medina, calls Islam Hanifiyah at the time of dispute with Banu Nadir.¹⁰  One poem attributed to Hassan bin Thabit, the poet laureate of the Prophet, at the time of conquest of Mecca is:

You have lampooned the pure blessed Ḥanīf
Allah’s trusted one whose nature is loyalty.¹¹

It means word Hanifiyah has been being used interchangeably with word Islam for a while.  Actually, a Christian writer by name of Abu Ṣālih, writing about Egyptian Christians in the thirteenth century CE mentions Muslims in these words: ‘The Hanifite nation appeared and humbled the Romans’.¹²  So, Islam and Hanifiyah were synonymous up to thirteenth century CE.

Non-Muslims call them Muhajirun

The first mention of Muslims as a community in a non-Islamic source is in a papyrus of Greek language calculated to be written around 642 CE.  Here they are called Magaritai.¹³  In another document of slightly later date (around 644 CE), written in Syriac, they are referred to as Mahghre or Mahgrayry.¹⁴  To Crone, a Danish historian, it appears that these words are derived from Arabic ‘Muhājirūn’.¹⁵

Further Reading

History of Islam, Muslims in Mecca, https://historyofislam.org/muslims-in-mecca/

End notes

1. Qur’an 37:103.
2. Montgomery W. Watt Muhammad at Medina (London; Oxford University Press, 1956) 304.
3. Abdul-Qader al-Housan, “A selection of Safaitic inscriptions from the Mafraq Antiquities Office and Museum,” Arabian Epigraphic Notes 1 (2015): 83, inscription number 13, figure 13.
4. Inscription MKMR 108. From the Mafraq province of Jordan. Discovered by M. C. A. Macdonald, Geraldine King, Ann Searight in Jaw Epigraphic survey in 1981.
5. Cassandra Bennett, “Geographical and Religious Trends in the Pre-Islami Religious Beliefs of the North Arabian Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 44 (2014): 45.
6. Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, ed. and trans. Alfred Guillaume, (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 93.
7. Qur’an 3:19, 3:85, 5:3, 6:125, 39:22 and 61:7.
8. M. van Bechem, Materiaux pour un corpus inscriptionum, (Cairo 1927), Part 2, Vol. II, no. 217 (Islam appears in no. 215).
9. Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, ed. and trans. Alfred Guillaume, (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 278.
10. Muhammad bin ‘Umar al-Wāqidī, The life of Muḥammad:  kitāb al-Maghāzī, ed. Rizwi Faizer, trans. Rizwi Faizer, Amal Ismail and AbdulKader Tayob,  (London: Routledge, 2011), 179.
11. Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, ed. and trans. Alfred Guillaume, (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 559.  Here Ḥassān is addressing to Abu Sufyan and is talking about Prophet Muhammad.
12. Abu Ṣālih the Armenian, The churches and Monasteries of Egypt, ed. And trans. B. T. A. Evetts, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 231.
13. Adolf Grohmann, ‘Greek Papyri of the Early Islamic Period in the Collection of Archduke Rainer’, Etudes de papyrology 8 (Cairo: Institut Francais d’archeologie Orientale, 1957), 28.
14. Isho’yahb patriarchae III, Lbter Epistularum Coupus scriptorium chistianorum orientalium, Scriptores Syri, second series, vol. LXIV, ed. and Trans. Rubens Duval, (Leuven: Peeters publishers, 1904), 97.
15. Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism; the making of the Islamic World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 8.