Alphonse Mingana

"Almost all the religious terms in the Qur’an are derived from Syriac."

"There is no other language besides Syriac in which the word ‘Christians’ is expressed by the word nasara or anything near it….There is no doubt whatever that in the Persian Empire, and to some extent also in the Roman Empire, the Christians were called by non-Christians nasraye (the Nasara of the Qur’an), and that the Prophet took the word from the Syrians."