QMI-INS-007 · 46 AH
Inscription of ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīrām
نقش عبد الله بن ديرام
Wādī al-Sabīl
- اللهم
- اغفر لعبد اله (الله) بن ديرام
- كتب لأربع ليل (ليال) خلون من
- محرم من سنة ست وأر
- بعين
O God, forgive ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīrām. Written on the fourth night that had passed of Muḥarram, in the year six and forty.
Discovered by G. Ryckmans on 17 December 1951 in Wādī al-Sabīl, some 60 km northwest of al-Ḥuṣayniyyah. A later hand deliberately defaced the prayer by inserting the negation "lā," turning "O God, forgive ʿAbdallāh" into "O God, do NOT forgive ʿAbdallāh ibn Dīrām" — one of at least five known cases of intentional textual sabotage among early Arabic rock inscriptions, apparently driven by personal hostility toward the person prayed for. "Allāh" in line 2 is spelled with a single lām (ileh) — a very rare orthographic feature found in only a handful of inscriptions and papyri. The same one-lām spelling of the divine name appears in the signature of the Qurashī Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ (QMI-INS-000d). The same date formula, “when five nights had passed”, is used two years earlier by Abū Muḥammad ʿAmr ibn Rāfiʿ in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir 44 AH (QMI-INS-006b).
Source: Grohmann, Adolf. Arabic Inscriptions. Expédition Philby–Ryckmans–Lippens en Arabie, IIe partie: Textes épigraphiques, tome I. Bibliothèque du Muséon 50. Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1962. The text was copied by Gonzague Ryckmans in Wādī al-Sabīl on 17 December 1951.