QMI-INS-037a · 90 AH
Inscription of Ibrāhīm ibn Jamīl the Muezzin
نقش إبراهيم بن جميل المؤذن
North-western Arabia (Desert Team survey)
- انا ابراهيم بن جميل بن عبد الرحمن الموذن امر بتقوى الله وادل على صلة الرحم
- وكتب في رجب سنة [تسعين]
I am Ibrāhīm ibn Jamīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the muezzin. I enjoin mindfulness of God and point the way to keeping the ties of kinship. And [this] was written in Rajab of the year [ninety].
A short sermon in stone: the writer gives his profession — al-muʾadhdhin, the one who calls to prayer, an occupational title rarely seen in these inscriptions — and then exhorts the reader to mindfulness of God and to keeping the ties of kinship. The letters are cut deep into hard rock, but the year, written in a single word, is the least clear part of the text. The last word, the year, is not clearly visible. A tall stroke stands at its start, most likely the tāʾ, and this makes “tisʿīn” (ninety) the preferred reading, as the Desert Team also read it. On the reading adopted here it falls in Rajab 90 AH (May–June 709 CE), in the caliphate of al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik.
Source: Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ (the Desert Team). “Min kitābāt al-musāfirīn fī al-qarn al-awwal.” Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ (alsahra.org), April 2025, inscription 1.