QMI-INS-011a · 71 AH
Gravestone of ʿAbbāsah bint Jurayj, Aswān
شاهد قبر عباسة بنت جريج، أسوان
Aswān cemetery, Upper Egypt; Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo
- بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
- ان اعظم مصائب أهل الا
- سلام مصيبتهم بالنبي محمد
- صلى الله عليه وسلم
- هذا قبر عباسة ابنت (ابنة)
- جريج بن سند رحمت (رحمة) الله
- ومغفرته ورضوانه عليها
- توفيت يوم الاثنين لاربع
- عشر خلون من ذي القعدة
- سنة احدى وسبعين
- وهي تشهد ألا إله إلا الله
- وحده لا شريك له وأن
- محمدا عبده ورسوله
- صلى الله عليه وسلم
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. The greatest calamity of the people of Islam is their loss of the Prophet Muḥammad, may God bless him and grant him peace. This is the grave of ʿAbbāsah daughter of Jurayj ibn Sanad. The mercy of God, His forgiveness and His good pleasure be upon her. She died on Monday, with four- teen nights elapsed of Dhū al-Qaʿdah, in the year seventy-one, bearing witness that there is no god but God alone; He has no partner; and that Muḥammad is His servant and His messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace.
A sandstone gravestone from the cemetery of Aswān, dated Monday, 14 Dhū al-Qaʿdah of the year seventy-one (19 April 691 CE). It opens not with the dead but with the Prophet: “the greatest calamity of the people of Islam is their loss of the Prophet Muḥammad”, a thought that consoles the mourners by setting every later loss beside his. It then names ʿAbbāsah, daughter of Jurayj ibn Sanad, and closes with her profession of faith, “that there is no god but God alone; He has no partner; and that Muḥammad is His servant and His messenger”. The name Jurayj is borne by several clients of non-Arab origin in the early sources. Two words keep the open tāʾ of the feminine, ibnat for ibnah and raḥmat Allāh for raḥmah, a spelling found in the inscription of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khālid of 40 AH and in the Dome of the Rock (QMI-INS-005), and al-islām is divided across the line end after its article (al-/islām).
Source: El-Hawary, Hassan Mohammed. “The Second Oldest Islamic Monument Known, Dated A.H. 71 (A.D. 691), from the Time of the Omayyad Calif ʿAbd-el-Malik ibn Marwān.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1932): 289 ff.; Bacharach, Jere L., and Sherif Anwar. “Early Versions of the shahāda: A Tombstone from Aswan of 71 A.H., the Dome of the Rock, and Contemporary Coinage.” Der Islam 89 (2012). On the later date: Hoyland, Robert G. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It (1997), 695 n. 29. Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo. Reading and line division after El-Hawary (1932).