QMI-INS-023 · 80 AH
Inscription of Bakr ibn Abī Bakrah
نقش بكر بن أبي بكرة
Darb Ḥismā
- اللهم صلي على محمد النبي وتقبل شفعته (شفاعته) في الاخرة
- وارحمنا به في الآخرة كما رحمتنا به في الدنيا
- وكتب بكر بن أبي بكرة الأسلمي تمام سنة ثمنين (ثمانين)
O God, bless Muḥammad the Prophet and accept his intercession in the Hereafter, and have mercy on us through him in the Hereafter as You had mercy on us through him in this world, and Bakr ibn Abī Bakrah al-Aslamī wrote [this] at the very end of the year eighty.
One of the earliest Islamic inscriptions to invoke the Prophet Muḥammad's intercession (shafāʿah) on the Day of Judgment, echoing the Qurʾanic description of the Prophet as "a mercy to the worlds" (Qurʾān 21:107) and a well-known hadith, "O people, I am but a mercy sent [to you]." It stands on a rock along Darb Ḥismā, the overland route linking Syria and Medina in the 1st–2nd centuries AH, which ran north of Medina through al-Marwah, Suqyā al-Jazl, Badā, Shaghb and al-Kharīṭah before splitting toward Ayla/Egypt on one branch and Wādī Ram/Maʿān/Syria on the other. An undated prayer from Tabūk goes further and asks forgiveness for “Muḥammad the Prophet” before the writer, ʿAṭāʾ ibn Mīnāʾ (QMI-INS-037b).
Source: al-Saʿīd, ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. “Nuqūsh Muʾarrakhah Mubakkirah min Ṣadr al-Islām.” Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ (alsahra.org), 26 May 2018, updated 4 May 2025, inscription 4.