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.
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.