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 ).
The business is a commendation, and its last four lines (7–10) are only partly understood. After “Jarīr ibn” the father’s name begins with dāl and is not completed. Line 8 reads fa-sharrifhu wa-aʿṭihi , “honour him and give him”, and line 9 aḥsan , “the best”, so that Jarīr is to be received with honour and given generously, in keeping with his standing; the early register of stipends ranked men of standing in what the sources call sharaf al-ʿaṭāʾ . Line 9 then repeats ammā baʿd , and line 10 begins fa-ʿfu li-llāh , “and pardon, for God’s sake”, or, with the same letters, “and exempt him, for God’s sake”; the rest of that line is effaced by weathering. What is clear is the sense: Jarīr is to be honoured and given generously.
Who this Jarīr was cannot yet be said. The two best-known men of the name in Muʿāwiyah’s time do not fit the letter dāl . Jarīr ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Bajalī, the Companion, lived in Iraq and al-Jazīrah and died about 51–54 AH; the poet Jarīr ibn ʿAṭiyyah al-Khaṭafī, of Kulayb of Tamīm in al-Yamāmah, was a young man in these years. Either would require the reading of the father’s name to be wrong. More likely this Jarīr was a man of local standing, a tribal leader or a herd-owner of the country between Medina and Najd, who is not otherwise recorded; a clearer photograph of line 7 may settle the name.
A letter of this kind would normally have been written on papyrus or parchment and carried by its bearer. The rock copy does not fit that pattern well. The later route from Damascus to Medina that Ibn Khurradādhbih describes passes Tabuk and Wādī al-Qurā, not al-Ḥanākiyah, so the stone was not on the letter’s path of delivery. Three explanations seem open: a copy cut by Jarīr or one of his party to keep the caliph’s word at hand; a copy made by an official in that district; or an unfinished copy or practice text. The sender’s name stops at “Muʿāwiyah ibn” without “Abī Sufyān”, and ammā baʿd is written a second time in line 9, after the business has begun. Both features favour the last explanation, an unfinished copy or practice text, over a fair copy of the letter as sent. It is the only copy of a caliphal letter on stone in this catalog; the tax letter from Andarīn is of another kind, a draft written in ink on a marble slab ( QMI-INS-055ac ).
The letter carries no date, but its two correspondents fix it. Muʿāwiyah is “Commander of the Faithful”, so the text falls in his caliphate, 41–60 AH, and Marwān governed Medina for him twice, about 42–49 AH and again about 54–57 AH (the sources differ on the exact years). The inscription is therefore placed at c. 42–57 AH. The Ḥijāzī hand, upright and undotted, agrees with this. The same division of a word across the line end appears in a dated inscription of 76 AH from the Medina region ( QMI-INS-016b ).
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.