QMI-INS-001 · 24 AH
Inscription of Zuhayr
نقش زهير
Qāʿ al-Muʿtadil, near al-ʿUlā
- بسم الله
- أنا زهير كتبت زمن توفي عمر سنة أربع
- وعشرين
Bismillāh (In the name of God) I, Zuhayr, wrote [this] at the time ʿUmar died, the year four and twenty.
The oldest securely dated Islamic inscription known, discovered by Saudi archaeologist Dr. ʿAlī al-Ghabbān in Wādī al-Muʿtadil, northeast of al-ʿUlā, on the Syrian pilgrimage route (Darb al-Ḥajj al-Shāmī). Zuhayr dated his inscription by the death of the second caliph, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb — the earliest documentary Islamic source to mention him. The text opens with the short basmala ("bismillāh"), a formula also attested on Sasanian-influenced Arab coinage of 31, 43, 65 and 66 AH. Compare Qays’s graffito from Taymāʾ (QMI-INS-004a), which names the murder of ʿUthmān directly, after the dating by ʿUmar’s death given here.
Source: Ghabban, ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm, and Robert Hoyland. "The Inscription of Zuhayr, the Oldest Islamic Inscription (24 AH/AD 644–645), the Rise of the Arabic Script and the Nature of the Early Islamic State." Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 19 (2008): 210–237. Arabic edition: al-Ghabbān, ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm. Naqsh Zuhayr: naqsh islāmī muʾarrakh bi-sanat 24 H. Riyadh: King Fahd National Library, 2008.