QMI-INS-000c · 23 AH
Inscription of Salamah
نقش سلمة
North-west of Yanbuʿ al-Nakhl, Saudi Arabia
- كتب سلمة
- بثلاث وعشرين
Salamah wrote [this] in three and twenty.
A signature and a date and nothing more: the writer gives his name, Salamah, with no father, tribe or prayer, and dates the text to [the year] twenty-three. If the date is to the Hijrah, it falls in 23 AH (643–644 CE), the last year of ʿUmar’s caliphate, a year before the inscription of Zuhayr (QMI-INS-001). The Saudi Heritage Commission counts it among the earliest dated Islamic rock inscriptions.
Source: Saudi Heritage Commission (photograph). Earlier reading kataba Salamah thalāth wa-ʿishrīn as published in announcements of the Commission’s list of the earliest dated inscriptions (e.g. CNN Arabic, 11 June 2022). Revised reading as supplied for the catalog. First published in Kawatoko, M. “Archaeological Survey of Najran and Madinah 2002.” Atlal: The Journal of Saudi Arabian Archaeology 18 (2005), pp. 51–52, pl. 8.13(A), as a graffito from Muthallath near Yanbuʿ, translated “Salmah wrote / in three and twenty”. See also Hoyland, Robert G. “New Documentary Texts and the Early Islamic State.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 69.3 (2006), p. 411, n. 76.