A Seeker in Makkah

Waraqah was the son of Nawfal ibn Asad ibn 'Abd al-'Uzza of Quraysh, and Khadijah bint Khuwaylid ibn Asad was his first cousin. He lived in a city of idols, but he could not accept them.

Ibn Ishaq reports that on a festival day, while Quraysh gathered around one of their idols, four men quietly agreed that their people had lost the religion of their father Ibrahim: Waraqah ibn Nawfal, 'Ubaydullah ibn Jahsh, 'Uthman ibn al-Huwayrith and Zayd ibn 'Amr ibn Nufayl. Each went his own way in search of the truth.

Waraqah became a Christian and devoted himself to the earlier scriptures. 'A'ishah describes him in Sahih al-Bukhari as a man who had become a Christian before Islam, who wrote in Hebrew script and copied from the Gospel as much as Allah willed. In Sahih Muslim's version of the same report, he wrote it in Arabic. By the time the revelation came, he was an old man who had lost his sight.