QMI-INS-006a · Before 73 AH
Inscription of ʿAbdallāh ibn Muṭīʿ, Ḥismā
نقش عبد الله بن مطيع، حسمى
Darb Ḥismā, Tabūk region, Saudi Arabia
- أنا عبد الله بن مطيع
- لا مُلكَ إلا لله
I am ʿAbdallāh ibn Muṭīʿ. There is no dominion but God’s.
A two-line text cut in the banded sandstone of Darb Ḥismā, north-west of Tabūk, on the road that joined al-Madīnah to Syria. The writer gives his name in the first person, anā, and follows it with a short declaration: lā mulka illā li-llāh, “there is no dominion but God’s”. The phrase recalls Qurʾānic language of God’s sovereignty, “Whose is the dominion today? God’s, the One, the Overpowering” (Q 40:16). It has no parallel among the dated inscriptions of this catalog.
Source: Discovered and photographed by Saʿd ibn Muḥammad al-Tuwayjirī, published on X (@OfNajd), 3 July 2020, with the reading «أنا عبدالله بن مطيع / لا ملك إلا (ا)لله». The neighbouring text of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿĀmir ibn Rabīʿah after the same publisher. On ʿAbdallāh ibn Muṭīʿ: Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣābah; Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghābah; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāyah wa-l-nihāyah, among those killed with Ibn al-Zubayr in 73 AH; al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām. On ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿĀmir ibn Rabīʿah: al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām; Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿāb.