QMI-INS-055mb · 130 AH
Inscription of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān, east of al-Madīnah
نقش عبد الرحمن بن سليمان، شرق المدينة
East of al-Madīnah
- اللهم إن عبد الرحمن بن سليمان
- يعوذ بك ويعظمك ويسألك نجاة
- من شر ما بعد الموت وهول المطلع
- وكتب لثلث خلون من شعبان سنة
- ثلثين ومائة
O God, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān seeks refuge in You and magnifies You, and asks You for deliverance from the evil of what comes after death and the terror of the place of rising. And it was written with three nights elapsed of Shaʿbān, in the year one hundred and thirty.
A prayer from the country east of al-Madīnah, dated in Shaʿbān 130 AH, two years before the fall of the Umayyad caliphate. It is framed in the third person: “O God, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān seeks refuge in You and magnifies You”, the writer presenting himself before God by name. What he asks for is deliverance “from the evil of what comes after death and the terror of the place of rising” ( hawl al-muṭṭalaʿ ), the moment of standing before God at the resurrection; the phrase is known from early pious literature, where it is put in the mouth of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb on his deathbed. Few dated inscriptions look so directly beyond the grave.
The text is cut in a careful hand across a dark rock face, with the date in its usual late Umayyad form: the day counted by the nights that have passed ( li-thalāth khalawna ), the month named, and the year written out with thalāthīn spelled thlthyn , without the long alif . It joins the dated inscriptions of the Medina region in this catalog, among them those of 76, 110 and 114 AH ( QMI-INS-016b , QMI-INS-055ag , QMI-INS-055ah ). The line division follows the published reading. Two years later, in 132 AH, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khaṭṭāb cut a profession of faith north of the city ( QMI-INS-055pb ).
Source: Published by ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Rumayḥī (@alrromehi) on X (formerly Twitter), 16 Muḥarram 1442 AH. Photograph by Fayṣal Dhaʿār al-ʿAwfī. Reading as published.