QMI-INS-037c · 1st–2nd c. AH
Inscription of al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Dāwūd: “I Took the Inheritance of Zayd”
نقش الضحاك بن داود: «أخذت ميراث زيد»
Ḥismā, Tabūk region, north-western Arabia
- انا الضحاك بن داود
- بن أبي زبير في قبضة الله
- اتقلب أرسلني أبي
- أخذت ميراث زيد
I am al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Dāwūd ibn Abī Zubayr, living in the bounty of God. My father sent me. I took the inheritance of Zayd.
A four-line text on a dark-patinated rock face in Ḥismā. It opens with the writer’s own signature, “I am al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Dāwūd ibn Abī Zubayr”, a form that ties a text to its author more firmly than a prayer naming him in the third person (compare Khālid ibn al-ʿĀṣ, QMI-INS-004c, and the note to QMI-INS-055pz). He describes himself as living in the bounty of God: the words fī qabḍat Allāh atqallabu, literally “in the grip of God I turn about”, are rendered here by their sense, that his life and its changes are held in God’s care and favour, and then gives the reason for his journey: “my father sent me; I took the inheritance of Zayd”. Most texts in the catalog are prayers; few record a private errand in the writer’s own words.
Source: Photograph and text published by the Desert Team (Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ), alsahra.org, Ḥismā, 10 December 2021. Reading checked against the photograph by Ahmed W. Shaker. On Zayd ibn Thābit and inheritance: al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ, Abwāb al-Manāqib; Ibn Mājah, al-Sunan, al-Muqaddimah; Mālik, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, Kitāb al-Farāʾiḍ.