QMI-INS-021 · 80 AH
Inscription of Ḥabīb ibn Abī Ḥabīb
نقش حبيب بن أبي حبيب
Qārat al-Ṣibgh
- أنا حبيب بن أبي حبيب مولى عروة بن الزبير
- اسئل (اسأل) الله أن يجعل موتي قتل (كذا) في سبيله
- واسئله (اسأله) أن يجعلني من المهتدين رحم الله
- من قل (قال) آمين وكتب في سنة ثمنين (ثمانين)
I, Ḥabīb ibn Abī Ḥabīb, client (mawlā) of ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, ask God to make my death a killing in His cause, and I ask Him to make me one of the rightly guided. May God have mercy on whoever says āmīn. And it was written in the year eighty.
Ḥabīb identifies himself as a mawlā (client) of ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr (23–93 AH), a leading Medinan hadith scholar and one of the "Seven Jurists of Medina," who is known to have had many clients — Ḥabīb among them. The scribe consistently omits the alif that marks the accusative case (e.g. writing "qatlā" without its final alif), a common feature of undotted, unvowelled early Ḥijāzī orthography. The inscription shows signs of later tampering by visitors.
Source: al-Ghabbān, Maysāʾ ʿAlī. al-Kitābāt al-Islāmīyah al-Mubakkirah fī Haḍbat Ḥismā bi-Minṭaqat Tabūk. PhD diss., Jāmiʿat al-Malik Saʿūd, 2017, p. 207.