QMI-INS-001a · c. 24 AH
Inscription of Zuhayr, Mawlā of the Daughter of Shaybah
نقش زهير مولى ابنت شيبة
Qāʿ al-Muʿtadil, near al-ʿUlā
- أنا زهير مولى ابنت شيبة
I am Zuhayr, client (mawlā) of the daughter of Shaybah.
An undated signature found close to the inscription of Zuhayr dated 24 AH, at Qāʿ al-Muʿtadil near al-ʿUlā ( QMI-INS-001 ). It carries no date and no formula, only the name and a relationship, but its place beside the dated text and the closeness of the hand make it likely that the same Zuhayr wrote it. That remains an inference from the setting and the script, not something the text itself states, so the date given here is approximate.
If the identification holds, the text adds what the dated inscriptions do not say: Zuhayr was a client ( mawlā ) of a woman, “the daughter of Shaybah”. A woman as patron of a client is worth noting in so early a text. She is named only through her father, and the text does not allow us to say which Shaybah is meant; among the Qurashīs of the time the name was borne, for example, by Shaybah ibn Rabīʿah ibn ʿAbd Shams, killed at Badr, and by Shaybah ibn ʿUthmān of the ʿAbd al-Dār, keeper of the Kaʿbah.
The word for daughter is spelled ibnat with an open tāʾ (ابنت), as in the prayer for Umm Salamah, “daughter of Hishām” ( QMI-INS-055ae ). With this text the catalog holds two other inscriptions by Zuhayr, dated by the death of ʿUmar and by the appointment of ʿUthmān, both in 24 AH ( QMI-INS-001 , QMI-INS-002 ).
Source: Photograph by the Desert Team (فريق الصحراء), alsahra.org/damigh. Reading as supplied for the catalog.