QMI-INS-000d · Before 59 AH
Inscription of Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ
نقش سعيد بن العاص
Northern Arabia (site unpublished)
- أنا سعيد بن العص (العاص) ربي اله (الله)
I am Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ. My Lord is God.
A signature of five words: the writer gives his name and declares rabbī Allāh, “my Lord is God”. The Desert Team identify him as Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ ibn Umayyah, the Qurashī who was a boy when the Prophet died, was among the men ʿUthmān charged with writing out the copies of the Qurʾan, governed Kufa under ʿUthmān and Medina under Muʿāwiyah, and died in 57 or 59 AH. If the identification holds, this is the hand of a man the sources place at the copying of the muṣḥaf, and the text must have been cut before his death. Nothing in it gives a date, so the year shown here is only that upper limit.
Source: al-Saʿīd, ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. “Riḥlat naqsh Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ, al-juzʾ al-awwal.” Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ (alsahra.org), 7 April 2026. Photograph by the Desert Team (Aḥmad al-Dāmigh and Ziyād al-Saʿīd). Reading as supplied for the catalog.