QMI-INS-030 · 83 AH
Inscription of ʿUfayr ibn al-Muḍārib
نقش عفير بن المضارب
Wādī al-Aqraʿ
- آمنت بما كذب به
- أصحب (أصحاب) الحجر وكتب عفير
- بن المضرب (المضارب) في سنة
- ثلث (ثلاث) وثمنين (ثمانين)
I believe in what the companions of al-Ḥijr denied, and ʿUfayr ibn al-Muḍārib wrote [this], in the year three and eighty.
The phrase "what the companions of al-Ḥijr denied" echoes the Qurʾanic story of Thamūd, the people of the prophet Ṣāliḥ (cf. Qurʾān 15:80–83). The same formula appears in an inscription from south of al-ʿUlā (1st–2nd century AH) reading "I am Abū ʿAmmār, I believe in what the companions of al-Ḥijr denied the messengers," a more direct quotation of the Qurʾanic verse. Unusually for this corpus, the scribe adds dots to distinguish some letters — eight dotted letters in total (nūn, tāʾ, dhāl, bāʾ, jīm, fāʾ, yāʾ, ḍād) — with tāʾ marked by two dots above and yāʾ by two dots below, an early and inconsistent step toward the fully dotted Arabic script of later centuries.
Source: al-Kilābī, Ḥayāt. al-Nuqūsh al-Islāmīyah ʿalā Ṭarīq al-Ḥajj al-Shāmī bi-Shamāl Gharb al-Mamlakah al-ʿArabīyah al-Saʿūdīyah min al-Qarn al-Awwal ilā al-Qarn al-Khāmis al-Hijrī. al-Riyāḍ: Maktabat al-Malik Fahd al-Waṭanīyah, 1430 AH / 2009, pp. 66–68.