The story of the name
The preserver
Tradition remembers Uzair (AS) as the man who gave his people their Book back. After calamity had scattered Bani Israel and the Torah was all but lost to them, later accounts relate that Uzair restored it — a scholar-servant whose life's work was carrying scripture across a generation that nearly dropped it. Most Muslim scholars identify him with Ezra, the priest-scribe of the Hebrew Bible, who read the rediscovered Law aloud to a returned and weeping people (Ezra 7; Nehemiah 8). This identification is widespread in the tafsir tradition, though the Qur'an itself neither confirms it nor gives any biography.
A single mention, and what it corrects
Uzair is named exactly once in the Qur'an: "the Jews say, Uzair is the son of Allah" (Surah al-Tawbah, 9:30) — a verse whose purpose is to affirm the absolute oneness of Allah, not to describe Uzair's life. Classical commentators — al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, al-Qurtubi among them — were careful about the scope of this: they did not read the verse as describing all Jews everywhere, but as addressing a specific group or a localized belief current among some in Arabia at the time. What the verse establishes, plainly, is the boundary: no human being, however righteous or learned, may be elevated to divine status.
Was he a prophet?
The Qur'an names Uzair but does not call him a prophet. Classical scholars are divided: some considered him a prophet, largely on the strength of his traditional identification with Ezra and his role in preserving the Torah; others held him to be a great scholar, a priest, or simply a righteous servant of Allah. No verse or authentic hadith settles the question.
An identification, offered without certainty
Some classical commentators connect Uzair to the unnamed man of Surah al-Baqarah, 2:259 — caused to die for a hundred years, then raised, his food unspoiled, made himself into a sign. The Qur'an does not name this man. Other commentators proposed different identifications entirely. This site records the connection as one interpretation among several, not as an established fact.
To carry this name
To carry this name is to be a preserver — someone who carries knowledge across a generation that nearly lost it, and hands it over intact.