QMI-INS-002b · c. 27 AH
Inscription of ʿAmr ibn Rabīʿah al-Thaqafī: “the Year of Ifrīqiyah”
نقش عمرو بن ربيعة الثقفي: عام إفريقية
Darb Ḥismā, north-western Arabia
- أنا عمرو بن ربيعة الثّقفيّ
- وكتبت هذا عام إفرقيّة
I am ʿAmr ibn Rabīʿah al-Thaqafī, and I wrote this in the year of Ifrīqiyah.
A traveller of the tribe of Thaqīf dates his name by a campaign: “the year of Ifrīqiyah”. Ifrīqiyah is the Roman province of Africa, roughly modern Tunisia. The expedition is that of ʿAbdallāh ibn Saʿd ibn Abī Sarḥ, governor of Egypt, sent by ʿUthmān and reinforced from Medina with many Companions and their sons, among them ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar, ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAmr and ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Zubayr. It defeated the Byzantine exarch Gregory (Jurjīr) near Sufetula (Sbeitla). Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ, al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr place it in 27 AH (647–648 CE), and the Desert Team date the inscription to that year.
The date is that of the event named on the stone; the writer gives no year. The name is spelled Ifrqyh , without the yāʾ after the rāʾ , a foreign name still new to Arabic writers. The text is on the same crowded rock as the inscription of ʿAmmār al-Laythī, dated by “the year of the conquest of the sea” ( QMI-INS-002c ). Both are among the few early texts dated by a military campaign. Compare the dating by the death or killing of ʿUmar ( QMI-INS-001 , QMI-INS-002a ) and by the rising in Egypt ( QMI-INS-004b ).
Source: Desert Team (Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ), “al-Taʾrīkh bi-l-ḥawādith fī al-nuqūsh al-islāmiyyah al-mubakkirah”, alsahra.org, 4 May 2018; and “Nuqūsh mutafarriqah min Ḥismā”, alsahra.org, 19 September 2018. Reading and dating by ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Saʿīd.