QMI-INS-055o · 110 AH
Foundation Inscription of Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī
نقش تأسيس قصر الحير الشرقي
Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī, Syrian desert (Large Enclosure)
- [بسم الله] الرحمن الرحيم
- [لا] إله إلا الله وحديه (وحده) لا شريك له
- [مـ]حمد رسول الله أمر بصنعة
- [هـ]ذيه المدينة عبد الله هشام
- [ا]مير المؤمنين وكان هذا
- مما عمل أهل حمص على يدي سليم
- بن عبيد سنة عشر وماية
[In the name of God,] the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. [There is no] god but God alone; He has no partner; [Mu]ḥammad is the messenger of God. The making of this city was ordered by the servant of God Hishām, Commander of the Faithful; and this was among the work done by the people of Ḥimṣ, at the hands of Sulaym ibn ʿUbayd, in the year one hundred and ten.
The foundation inscription of the caliph Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik at Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī, in the desert between Palmyra and the Euphrates, dated 110 AH (728–729 CE). It was found in the nineteenth century by J.-B. Rousseau in the Large Enclosure of the site and published by Charles Clermont-Ganneau as “an inscription of the caliph Hishām”. After the profession of faith, it records that Hishām ordered the work, that it was carried out by “the people of Ḥimṣ” — a levy from the jund of Ḥimṣ — and that it was supervised by Sulaym ibn ʿUbayd, a formula of order, workforce and overseer found in other Umayyad building texts. Its key word has long been disputed. Rousseau read “this city” (al-madīnah), and the inscription has often been cited as calling Qaṣr al-Ḥayr a “city”; but Clermont-Ganneau, troubled by the phrase “the making of a city”, proposed “this minaret” (al-miʾdhanah). Luke Treadwell has re-examined the question (2024), drawing on the use of the root ṣ-n-ʿ in the inscription of the khan at Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Gharbī (109 AH) and on an Umayyad inscription from the mosque at Bosra, which supports Clermont-Ganneau’s revised reading. If “minaret” is right, the text is among the earliest dated witnesses to the minaret in Islam. The reading given here follows the published text, with “city”. Two spellings stand out: waḥdahu is written وحديه and hādhihi is written هذيه.
Source: Treadwell, Luke. “Madīna or Miʾdhana? Revisiting the ‘Foundation Inscription’ of Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī.” Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World 5 (2024): 134–154. Earlier: C. Clermont-Ganneau, “Une inscription du calife Hichâm (an 110 de l’hégire)”, in Recueil d’archéologie orientale; first copied by J.-B. Rousseau.