QMI-INS-055la · 123 AH
Inscription of Khālid ibn Ghannām, Najrān
نقش خالد بن غنام، نجران
Najrān region, Saudi Arabia
- رحم الله خالد
- بن غنم (غنام) أمين و
- كتب شِهر سنة
- ثلاث وعشرين
- ومئة
May God have mercy on Khālid ibn Ghannām. Āmīn. And Shihr wrote [this], in the year three and twenty and one hundred.
A short prayer for mercy from the Najrān region, dated 123 AH, in the last years of the caliph Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. It asks God’s mercy for Khālid and closes his name with āmīn before the record of writing. The father’s name, Ghannām, is written ghnm without the long alif, as usual in this hand. In line 3 the writer names himself, wa-kataba Shihr, “and Shihr wrote [this]”, so the text keeps apart the man prayed for and the man who cut the stone; the date gives the year alone, without a month. The hand is broad and pecked into the dark patina, with tall alifs and long joining strokes.
Source: Published by Mālik al-Sulaymī (Āthārī) on X (formerly Twitter), 23 May; discovered by @hamad_najran. Reading as published.