QMI-INS-055pb · 132 AH
Inscription of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khaṭṭāb, north of al-Madīnah
نقش عبد الرحمن بن خطاب، شمال المدينة
North of al-Madīnah
- آمن عبد الرحمن
- بن خطاب بالله ا
- لعظيم
- وكتبت سنة ثنتين و
- ثلاثين ومائة
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khaṭṭāb believes in God the Almighty. And it was written in the year two and thirty and one hundred.
A short profession of faith from the country north of al-Madīnah, dated 132 AH, the year in which the Umayyad caliphate fell to the ʿAbbāsids. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khaṭṭāb declares that he “believes in God the Almighty” ( āmana … bi-llāh al-ʿaẓīm ), and the record of writing uses the feminine passive, wa-kutibat , “and it was written”, with the inscription itself as its subject. The article of al-ʿaẓīm is divided across the line end ( a-/lʿẓym ), a habit seen in other texts of the region.
Its publisher, Muḥammad al-Mughadhdhawī, identifies the writer as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khaṭṭāb ibn Nuʿmān ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Kaʿb ibn Mālik al-Anṣārī, a descendant of the Companion and poet Kaʿb ibn Mālik, and reports further inscriptions of the same family on their lands north of the city: one of his paternal uncle ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Nuʿmān of the same year, and a later text of his own dated 179 AH, which falls outside the range of this catalog. The stone itself gives only “ibn Khaṭṭāb”, so the longer lineage rests on the publisher’s study. With the prayer of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān of 130 AH east of the city, it closes the dated series of the Medina region in this catalog ( QMI-INS-055mb ).
Source: al-Mughadhdhawī, Muḥammad (@mohammed93athar), Nawādir al-āthār wa-l-nuqūsh, X (formerly Twitter), 31 July 2022 (“the seventh inscription”). Photograph and reading by the publisher.