QMI-INS-055g · 107 AH
Inscription of Wādī al-Gharra
نقش وادي الغرة
Wādī al-Gharra, Jordan
- رضي الله عن أقرف
- ابن مر بن
- رضا لا أشرك [بالله]
- أحد ولا
- أطع رب
- ود وهابل آمن
- برب المسلمين
- سبع الله
- ومأية
May God be pleased with Aqraf son of M-r son of Riḍā. I do not associate [with God] anyone, nor do I obey the lord[s] Wadd and Hubal. I believe in the Lord of the Muslims. Seven — God — and one hundred.
A profession of faith that names what it renounces: the writer declares that he associates no one with God and will not obey Wadd and Hubal, two of the best-known gods of pre-Islamic Arabia — Wadd, worshipped by Kalb at Dūmat al-Jandal, and Hubal, the chief idol of the Kaʿbah — and that he believes in “the Lord of the Muslims”. Explicit rejection of named pre-Islamic deities is very rare in the early inscriptions, and it is striking to find it as late as 107 AH (725–726 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. The inscription was recorded during a survey of Wādī al-Gharra in Jordan in May 1999 and is shown here in the editor’s facsimile. The date is read as “sabʿ … wa-miʾah” (one hundred and seven); the word between the two numerals is read by the editor as “Allāh”. Several readings remain open — the writer’s name and his father’s (Aqraf ibn M-r ibn Riḍā), and a short vertical line of writing at the left of the facsimile that is not included in the reading. An undated prayer from Najrān, in an early Ḥijāzī hand of the first century, asks God to forgive “the Muslims” (QMI-INS-055ak).
Source: Jumʿah Muḥammad Karīm, “Naqsh Kūfī yaʿūd ilā al-ʿaṣr al-Umawī min janūb sharq al-Ghurrah – qaḍāʾ al-Jafr,” Dirāsāt al-ʿUlūm al-Insāniyyah wa-al-Ijtimāʿiyyah 28, no. 2 (2001): 391–413.