QMI-INS-055j · 100 AH
Inscription of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿĀbid al-Khathʿamī
نقش عبد الله بن عابد الخثعمي
Ḥismā, north-western Arabia
- أنا عبد الله بن عا
- بد الخثعمي من أهل
- فلسطين أومن
- بالله وحده و
- كتب سنة مئة
I am ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿĀ- bid al-Khathʿamī, of the people of Palestine. I believe in God alone. And [this] was written in the year one hundred.
A short profession of faith in which the writer tells us who he is and where he comes from: a man of Khathʿam, an Arabian tribe, who calls himself one “of the people of Palestine” — that is, of the military district (jund) of Filasṭīn in Bilād al-Shām. Such a statement of home region is rare in the inscriptions of this catalog, and it shows the movement of Arabian tribesmen settled in Syria along the Ḥismā route between Syria and the Ḥijāz. It is dated by year alone, 100 AH (718–719 CE), in the caliphate of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. The writer carries his father’s name over the line end (ʿĀ-/bid). The incisions are faint on the patinated sandstone; the reading follows the Desert Team. Another member of Khathʿam in Palestine, Ibn Rabʿiyyah al-Khathʿamiyyah, wrote a prayer in a cave house at Bayt Jibrīn in the reign of Hishām (QMI-INS-055al).
Source: Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ (the Desert Team), inscriptions of Ḥismā; photograph and reading published at alsahra.org.