QMI-INS-055f · 109 AH
Inscription of Wādī Shīreh
نقش وادي الشيرة
Wādī Shīreh, Ḥismā (Wadi Ramm), southern Jordan
- بسم
- الله الرحمن
- الرحيم اللهم
- تقبل من عبد [؟] سعيد
- صلاته وصومه وحفظه
- في أهله وأخلفه في [؟]
- وإصلحه إنك على [كل شي قدير]
- صلى الله عليه وسلم وأسلم عليه
- ورحمة الله وبركاته و
- كتب في رمضان
- سنة تسع وماية
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. O God, accept from ʿAbd [?] Saʿīd his prayer and his fasting, and keep him among his family, and be his successor in [?], and set him right. Truly You have [power over all things]. God bless him and grant him peace, and peace be upon him, and the mercy of God and His blessings. And [this] was written in Ramaḍān of the year one hundred and nine.
A traveller’s prayer, dated Ramaḍān 109 AH (December 727 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. The writer asks God to accept his prayer and his fasting — fitting for the month in which he wrote — to keep him while away from his family, and to take his place among them, the classic petition of one on a journey. It was found in the winter of 1988 by the ʿAqaba–Maʿān Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey, directed by William Jobling of the University of Sydney, in Wādī Shīreh in the Ḥismā desert, beside a rare early Islamic open-air mosque and with several other early inscriptions; it is the earliest dated of the group. The same stone carries animal drawings, camels and ibex, cut by other hands. Parts of the writer’s name and of the sixth and seventh lines remain unread or uncertain.
Source: Corbett, Glenn J., and Firas Bqain. “Traces of Early Islam in Wadi Ramm: A Desert Mosque and Waystation from the Time of the Umayyads.” Lecture, American Center of Research (ACOR), Amman, 4 March 2015. publications.acorjordan.org.