QMI-INS-055b · 110 AH
Inscription of Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad
نقش جعفر بن محمد
Mecca region
- أنا جعفر بن محمد أو
- صي كل مؤمن بتقوى الله
- والعمل بطاعته والرضى
- بقدره والصبر
- و (كذا) على بلائه والشكر على
- عطاه والتوكل عليه
- وكتب لعشر ليال خلت
- من شعبان سنة عشر
- ومئة
I am Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad. I en- join every believer to be mindful of God, to act in obedience to Him, to be content with His decree, to be patient in His trials, to be grateful for His gifts, and to trust in Him. Written when ten nights had passed of Shaʿbān, in the year one hundred and ten.
A testament (waṣiyyah) addressed to every believer, dated by day, month and year: ten nights into Shaʿbān 110 AH (November 728 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. Its six counsels — mindfulness of God, obedience, contentment with His decree, patience in trial, gratitude for His gifts and reliance upon Him — read as a short sermon rather than a personal prayer, and set it apart from the name-and-prayer formulas of most inscriptions in this catalog. An extra wāw stands before “ʿalā balāʾihi”. The writer gives only his name and his father’s. It has been suggested that he is Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq (d. 148 AH), who would have been in his late twenties in 110 AH and whose recorded sayings share this vocabulary of patience, gratitude and reliance on God. The identification remains a possibility only: Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad was a common name, and the inscription carries no nisba, kunya or further lineage that would confirm it. A rock inscription at al-Madīnah by Zayd ibn Ḥasan, probably Zayd ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, the brother of al-Ṣādiq’s grandmother Fāṭimah bint al-Ḥasan, is open to the same kind of identification (QMI-INS-055pza).
Source: al-Tuwayjirī, Saʿd. Photograph and reading posted on X (formerly Twitter), 30 March 2020.