QMI-INS-055p · 132 AH
Inscription of ʿAbdallāh ibn Mundhqān
نقش عبد الله بن منذقان
Jabal al-Aqraʿ, north of al-ʿUlā, al-Madīnah region
- اللهم
- آمن عبدالله بن منذ
- قان بالله وهو يسل ا
- لله بصحبة في سفره
- وكتب سنة ثنين وثلثين ومئة
O God, ʿAbdallāh ibn Mundh- qān believes in God, and he asks God for companionship on his journey. And [this] was written in the year one hundred and thirty-two.
A traveller’s declaration of faith and prayer: ʿAbdallāh ibn Mundhqān affirms his belief in God and asks Him for companionship (ṣuḥbah) on his journey — the guardianship of God over the traveller, a theme met again and again in the inscriptions written along the routes of Arabia. It is dated 132 AH (749–750 CE), the year in which the Umayyad caliphate fell to the ʿAbbāsids: Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Saffāḥ was proclaimed caliph in Kūfah in Rabīʿ I, and Marwān ibn Muḥammad was killed in Egypt in Dhū l-Ḥijjah. As the writer gives no month, the inscription stands at the very turn of the two dynasties, and it closes the chronological range of this catalog. The spelling is of its time: “ithnayn” is written without its initial alif and “thalāthīn” without its long alif, and the writer divides both his father’s name (Mundh-/qān) and the name of God (A-/llāh) across the line end. It is one of the dated Islamic inscriptions published from Jabal al-Aqraʿ, north of al-ʿUlā.
Source: al-ʿAbbūdī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, Fuʾād ibn Ḥasan al-ʿĀmir, and Kāmil ibn ʿAlī al-Ghānim. “Nuqūsh Islāmiyyah muʾarrakhah min Jabal al-Aqraʿ shamāl muḥāfaẓat al-ʿUlā bi-minṭaqat al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah.” Majallat al-Siyāḥah wa-l-Āthār 29, no. 1 (Riyadh: King Saud University, 2017/1438 AH): 25–58, at 52, inscription 2, pl. 6.