QMI-INS-055c · 105 AH
Inscription of Ziyād ibn Dhakwān
نقش زياد بن ذكوان
Tanūmah, ʿAsīr region
- اللهم صلي على محمد
- عبدك ورسولك وتقبّل شفاعته
- في أمته آمين ثم آمين
- وكتب [زياد] بن ذكوان يوم
- الأحد في جمادى من خمس و
- مائة وهو يسأل الله الجنة نز
- لا ويعوذ بالله من
- النار
O God, bless Muḥammad, Your servant and Your messenger, and accept his intercession for his community. Amen, and again amen. [Ziyād] ibn Dhakwān wrote [this] on Sunday, in Jumādā, [in the year] one hundred and five. He asks God for Paradise as a dwel- ling, and seeks refuge in God from the Fire.
A blessing upon the Prophet joined to a request that God accept his intercession (shafāʿah) for his community — an early dated witness to the idea of the Prophet’s intercession on the stones of Arabia. It is dated by weekday, month and year: a Sunday in Jumādā 105 AH (autumn 723 CE), in the last months of Yazīd II’s caliphate. The writer does not say which of the two months of Jumādā he means. The closing prayer asks for Paradise as a nuzul, a dwelling prepared for a guest — a Qurʾanic word (Q 18:107) — and the writer divides it across the line end (nuz-/lan). The first name is uncertain and is read here tentatively as Ziyād. The same blessing on Muḥammad as “Your servant and Your messenger”, with a prayer for an honoured nuzul, is written by Saʿīd ibn Dhakwān, client of Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān (QMI-INS-009a).
Source: al-Sulaymī, Mālik. Photograph and reading posted on X (formerly Twitter), 21 October.