QMI-INS-006 · 43 AH
Inscription of Shurayḥ, Mawlā of Banū ʿAdī
نقش شريح مولى بني عدي
Darb Ḥismā
- أنا شريح مولى بني عدي بن كعب
- أوصي ببر الله والرحم كتب هذا من سنه ثلث وأ
- ربعين
I, Shurayḥ, mawlā of Banū ʿAdī ibn Kaʿb, exhort [reverence for] God and ties of kinship. This was written in the year three and forty.
Carved on a rock along Darb Ḥismā, a route that linked Syria and Medina in the 1st–2nd centuries AH. Unlike most entries in this corpus, Shurayḥ's text is not a prayer but a brief moral exhortation — reverence for God and the maintenance of family ties — following his self-identification as a mawlā (client/ally) of Banū ʿAdī ibn Kaʿb. First documented by the Al-Sahra desert survey team. The inscription carries no diacritical dots except on the nūn of "sanah" (year). Its alif is compared with that of the undated inscription of Abū Bakr from Ḥismā (QMI-INS-000).
Source: al-Saʿīd, ʿAbdallāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, et al. Nuqūsh Ḥismā: Kitābāt min Ṣadr al-Islām Shamāl Gharb al-Mamlaka. Manshūrāt al-Majallah al-ʿArabīyah, 2017, p. 14.