QMI-INS-014d · 65–86 AH
Milestone of ʿAbd al-Malik: the eighth mile from Jerusalem, Bāb al-Wād
ميل عبد الملك: الميل الثامن من إيلياء، باب الواد
Found in 1893 by the Ottoman watchtower at Khirbat Ḥarsīs, beside Bāb al-Wād, on the road from Jerusalem to Jaffa; not in its original place, which Sharon places at Khirbat Zabbūd. Now Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts de l’Islam, Paris
- [...] الطريق
- عبد الله عبد الملك
- أمير المؤمنين رحمت (رحمة) الله
- عليه من إيلياء إلى هذا
- الميل ثمانية أميال
[...] the road; the servant of God ʿAbd al-Malik, Commander of the Faithful, may God’s mercy be upon him. From Īliyāʾ to this milestone (there are) eight miles.
Found in a ruin north of the watchtower at Bāb al-Wād, where the road from Jerusalem to Jaffa leaves the hills for the coastal plain, and now in the Louvre. In ʿAbd al-Malik’s time al-Ramla had not yet been founded, and the road ran by way of Lydda to the coast. It is the best preserved of the milestones counted from Īliyāʾ, and its wording served as the model for restoring the fifth mile from Khirbat Iqbālā (QMI-INS-014b). The seventh mile from Abū Ghosh stood on the same road (QMI-INS-014c).
Source: van Berchem, Max. Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum, II/3 (Cairo, 1920), pl. I; II/1, Jérusalem “Ville” (Cairo, 1922), no. 2, pp. 18–19, 21; Sharon, Moshe. Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae, vol. II (Leiden: Brill, 1999), “Bāb al-Wād”, pp. 1–7; Cytryn-Silverman, Katia. “The Fifth Mīl from Jerusalem: Another Umayyad Milestone from Southern Bilād al-Shām.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 70, no. 3 (2007): 603–610, at pp. 607, 609. Reproduced in Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II (1971), p. 83.