QMI-INS-055i · 122 AH
Inscription of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Malik
نقش محمد بن عبد الله بن عبد الملك
Jabal Thawr, Mecca
- أنا محمد بن عبد الله بن عبد الملك
- أشهد أن الله وحده لا إله
- إلا هو وحده لا شريك له
- وأن محمدًا عبده ورسوله على
- ذلك يشهد عبد الله وعلى ذلك يشهد
- محمد بن سيار [...] وكتب
- في شهر جماد الآخر سنة
- اثنين وعشرين ومائة
I am Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. I bear witness that God alone — there is no god but He, alone, without partner — and that Muḥammad is His servant and His messenger. To this ʿAbdallāh bears witness, and to this bears witness Muḥammad ibn Sayyār [...]. And [this] was written in the month of Jumādā al-Ākhirah of the year one hundred and twenty-two.
A profession of faith set down like a sworn statement: after the writer declares the oneness of God and the prophethood of Muḥammad, two witnesses are named — ʿAbdallāh and Muḥammad ibn Sayyār — who “bear witness to this”, a legal form of attestation rarely seen on the rocks. It is dated Jumādā al-Ākhirah 122 AH (May 740 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, and comes from Jabal Thawr outside Mecca, the mountain of the cave in which the Prophet and Abū Bakr sheltered during the Hijrah. The writer’s name, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, invites comparison with the Umayyad house — ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Malik was a son of the caliph — but the names were common and the identification remains a possibility only. Part of the sixth line is lost.
Source: al-Ḥārithī, Nāṣir ibn ʿAlī. al-Āthār al-Islāmīyah fī Makkah al-Mukarramah. 1st ed. 1430 AH/2009, p. 575.