QMI-INS-055k · 120 AH
Inscription of Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Nāfiʿ
نقش محمد بن إبراهيم بن نافع
Ḥismā, north-western Arabia
- اللهم اغفر
- لمحمد بن ابرهيم
- بن نافع مولى أبو (أبي)
- هريرة ذنبه
- العظيم وكتب سنة عشرين ومئة
O God, forgive Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Nāfiʿ, client of Abū Hurayrah, his great sin. And [this] was written in the year one hundred and twenty.
A prayer for forgiveness by a client (mawlā) of Abū Hurayrah — the Companion best known as the most prolific narrator of ḥadīth — or of his family, written some sixty years after Abū Hurayrah’s death. Like many writers in this catalog, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm names his patron with pride: clientage tied non-Arab Muslims to an Arab house and was a mark of standing. He asks forgiveness for “his great sin”, a penitential phrasing that stands out among the more general prayers for forgiveness. It is dated by year alone, 120 AH (737–738 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. The spelling is of its time: “Ibrāhīm” is written without its long alif, and the kunyah keeps the form “Abū” after “mawlā”, as it often does in early texts.
Source: al-Saʿīd, ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. “Nuqūsh Muʾarrakhah Mubakkirah min Ṣadr al-Islām.” Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ (alsahra.org), 26 May 2018, updated Ramaḍān 1443 AH.