QMI-INS-055cb · c. 80–130 AH
Stone with the Abrahamic Blessing on the Prophet, Gaza
حجر بالصلاة الإبراهيمية، غزة
Gaza; find-spot unrecorded. Shown in “Trésors sauvés de Gaza – 5000 ans d’histoire” (Institut du monde arabe, Paris, 3 April–2 November 2025)
- إنك (؟) غفور رحيم وصلي
- عليه أنت وملئكتك المقربن (المقربين) وصلي
- عليه كما صل[يت] على ابرهيم و
- آل إبرهيم إنك حميد مجيد
… You are (?) Forgiving, Merciful. And bless him, You and Your angels brought near, and bless him as You [blessed] Abraham and the family of Abraham; You are Praiseworthy, Glorious.
The surviving part of a limestone block, broken at the top, shown in the exhibition “Trésors sauvés de Gaza – 5000 ans d’histoire” (Institut du monde arabe, Paris, 3 April–2 November 2025), among antiquities of Gaza rescued after the war, without any account of its date, find-spot or text. The four lines that remain close a prayer, “You are Forgiving, Merciful”, and then ask God, with “Your angels brought near”, to bless the one already named in the lost lines, “as You blessed Abraham and the family of Abraham; You are Praiseworthy, Glorious”. This is the ṣalāt ibrāhīmiyyah, the blessing on the Prophet that Muslims recite in the prayer, known from the ḥadīth of Kaʿb ibn ʿUjrah. The pronoun ʿalayhi refers to someone named above the break, almost certainly Muḥammad. No other inscription in this catalog gives the formula in full. As far as QMI is aware, the text has not been read or published before; the reading given here is its first edition.
Reading: Ahmed W. Shaker (QMI), first edition; as far as is known, the text is otherwise unpublished. Image: as published for the exhibition “Trésors sauvés de Gaza – 5000 ans d’histoire” (Institut du monde arabe, Paris, 3 April–2 November 2025). Most of the objects shown there belong to the Palestinian National Authority and have been kept at the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, since 2007; others come from the collection of Jawdat Khoudary in Gaza. The exhibition gives no reading, date or provenance for this stone.