QMI-INS-017 · 78 AH
Inscription of al-Rayyān ibn ʿAbdallāh
نقش الريان بن عبد الله
Ḥimā al-Numūr, Ṭāʾif
- شهد الريان بن عبد الله أنه لا إله إلا الله
- وشهد أن محمداً رسول الله
- ثم هو يَكفي من أتى أن يشهد على
- ذلك رحم الله الريان و
- غفر له وأستهدى به إلى صرط (صراط) الجنة
- واسله (واسأله) الشهدة (الشهادة) في سبيله ا
- مين كتب هذا الكتب (الكتاب)
- عام بني المسجد الحرام
- لسنة ثمان وسبعين
Al-Rayyān ibn ʿAbdallāh bore witness that there is no god but God, and bore witness that Muḥammad is the Messenger of God. That suffices whoever comes to bear witness to that. May God have mercy on al-Rayyān and forgive him, and guide him by it to the path of Paradise, and I ask Him for martyrdom in His cause. Ā- mīn. He wrote this writing in the year the Sacred Mosque was rebuilt, in the year seventy-eight.
A rare inscription that dates itself by a major construction project rather than a caliph or a numbered year alone: "the year the Sacred Mosque was rebuilt." Historical sources record that the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān began rebuilding the Sacred Mosque in 75 AH after damage from al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf's catapults during the siege of ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Zubayr, raising the walls and roofing them in teak, and gilding each column capital with fifty mithqāls of gold. First published by Dr. Nāṣir ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥārithī in 2007, who documented 60 Islamic inscriptions at this site. Several comparable rock inscriptions from Darb Ḥismā use the same double-dating technique, naming both a historical event and a numbered year.
Source: al-Ḥārithī, Nāṣir ibn ʿAlī. "Naqsh Kitābī Nādir Yuʾarrikh ʿImārat al-Khalīfah al-Umawī ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān lil-Masjid al-Ḥarām ʿĀm 78 AH." ʿĀlam al-Makhṭūṭāt wa-al-Nawādir 12, no. 2 (2007): 533.