QMI-INS-005 · 40 AH
Inscription of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khālid ibn al-ʿĀṣ
نقش عبد الرحمن بن خالد بن العاص
Wādī al-Shāmiyah (Ṣanq al-Zarqāʾ), ~45 km NE of Mecca
- رحمت (رحمة) الله وبر
- كته (بركاته) على عبد ا
- لرحمن بن خلد (خالد)
- بن العاص وكتب
- لسنه أربعين
The mercy of God and His bless- ings upon ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khālid ibn al-ʿĀṣ, and [he] wrote [this] in the year forty
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was a Tābiʿī (a member of the generation after the Prophet's Companions) who transmitted a hadith on wiping over leather socks; some scholars even counted him among the Companions. His father was Khālid ibn al-ʿĀṣ ibn Hishām al-Makhzūmī, who governed Mecca and embraced Islam at its conquest. The word "mercy" (raḥmah) is spelled with an open tāʾ — raḥmat — a spelling influenced by pre-Islamic Nabataean practice and also found in the Dome of the Rock inscriptions (72 AH) and several first-century papyri. A prayer for forgiveness by his father, Khālid ibn al-ʿĀṣ, survives on a boulder in the al-Bāḥah region (QMI-INS-004c). ʿAbd al-Raḥmān also left an undated prayer of his own in Wādī Khara in the al-Bāḥah region (QMI-INS-004cb), close to those of his brother al-Ḥārith and his son Ismāʿīl (QMI-INS-004cc, QMI-INS-004cd, QMI-INS-004ce).
Source: Sharaf al-Dīn, Aḥmad Ḥusayn. "al-Nuqūsh al-Islāmīyah bi-Darb Zubaydah." Aṭlāl 1 (1977): 69–70, pl. 49.