QMI-INS-007b · c. 42–57 AH
Letter of the Caliph Muʿāwiyah to Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, al-Ḥanākiyah
كتاب معاوية إلى مروان بن الحكم، الحناكية
al-Ḥanākiyah governorate, al-Madīnah region
- بسم الله
- من معوية (معاوية) بن
- أمير المؤمنين إلى مرو
- ن بن الحكم سلم عليك
- فإني أحمد إليك الله
- الذي لا إليه (إله) إلا هو أما بعد
- فإذا أتاك جرير بن د
- فا شرفه واعطه
- أحسن أما بعد
- فاعف لله ......
In the name of God. From Muʿāwiyah ibn Commander of the Faithful, to Mar- wān ibn al-Ḥakam. Peace be upon you. I praise to you God, besides whom there is no god. To proceed: when Jarīr ibn D… comes to you, honour him and give him the best (?). To proceed: and pardon (?) for God’s sake …
A letter of the caliph Muʿāwiyah to Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, his governor of Medina, copied onto a boulder at al-Ḥanākiyah, north-east of Medina, on the road that joins the city to Najd and Iraq. The inscription was found by a local resident in 2020, and despite its importance it has received little attention. It follows the opening of an early Arabic letter step by step: the basmalah, “from so-and-so to so-and-so”, the greeting salām ʿalayka, the praise fa-innī aḥmadu ilayka Allāh alladhī lā ilāha illā huwa, and ammā baʿd, after which the business of the letter begins. The name of the caliph is written mʿwyh, without the long alif, as on his dams at Ṭāʾif and near Medina (QMI-INS-009, QMI-INS-007a), and ilāh appears to be cut as ilayh, with a tooth before the final hāʾ. This is not a slip: Ahmad Al-Jallad has identified a letter shape for final hē with a denticle-like stroke before it, used in Qurʾānic manuscripts and Arabic inscriptions of the seventh and eighth centuries, so the word is simply ilāh written in an early form (Al-Jallad, “The Digraph اى in the Quranic Consonantal Text and the Identification of a New Letter Shape for Final Hē in the 7th to 8th Century Arabic Script”, Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29.1, 2021). It agrees with the early date of the inscription. Marwān’s name is divided across the line end (Mar-/wān).
Source: Published by Aḥmad ibn Hishām al-Mālikī on X (formerly Twitter), 27 March 2025. Reading by Ahmed W. Shaker; the end of line 10 is effaced.