QMI-INS-000e · c. before 15 AH
Inscription of ʿAlqamah ibn Ṭalḥah, Tabūk
نقش علقمة بن طلحة، تبوك
Tabūk region, Saudi Arabia
- أنا علقمة
- بن طلحة أشهد
- ألا إله إلا الله وأن
- محمدا رسول
- الله
I am ʿAlqamah ibn Ṭalḥah. I bear witness that there is no god but God, and that Muḥammad is the Messenger of God.
ʿAlqamah ibn Ṭalḥah gives his name and then the two testimonies of faith, with nothing else: no prayer and no date. The opening “I am ʿAlqamah” (أنا علقمة) speaks in the first person: the text is not written about ʿAlqamah or on his behalf, but by ʿAlqamah himself, who signs his own testimony on the rock. The inscription was recorded in the Tabūk region by the Al-Sahra Team in 2022. A Companion of this name is known: Ibn Ḥajar writes in al-Iṣābah, “ʿAlqamah ibn Ṭalḥah ibn Abī Ṭalḥah, brother of ʿUthmān ibn Ṭalḥah… he became a Muslim and was a Companion, and he was killed as a martyr on the day of al-Yarmūk”.
Al-Sahra Team, Tabūk region, 2022 (photograph and first publication); Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Iṣābah fī tamyīz al-ṣaḥābah, s.v. ʿAlqamah ibn Ṭalḥah.