QMI-INS-055qa · 127 AH
Inscription of Rāfiʿ ibn Sālim
نقش رافع بن سالم
North-western Arabia (exact site unpublished)
- اللهم اغفر لرافع بن سالم ولوالديه ولما ولدا وقهم عذاب النار إنك حميد مجيد
- آمين رب العالمين وكتب بثماني ليال بقين من ذي القعدة سنة سبع وعشرين ومئة
O God, forgive Rāfiʿ ibn Sālim and his parents and those they begot, and guard them from the punishment of the Fire; You are Praiseworthy, Glorious. Āmīn, Lord of the Worlds. And it was written with eight nights remaining of Dhū al-Qaʿdah, in the year one hundred and twenty-seven.
A two-line prayer cut along a smooth band of dark sandstone in north-western Arabia, dated with eight nights remaining of Dhū al-Qaʿdah 127 AH. Rāfiʿ ibn Sālim asks forgiveness for himself, for his parents and for “those they begot” ( wa-li-mā waladā ), that is, his brothers and sisters, so that the prayer reaches the whole household. Its wording is built from Qurʾānic phrases: wa-qihim ʿadhāb al-nār follows the prayer of the angels for the believers, “and guard them from the punishment of Hell” (Q 40:7; compare Q 2:201), and innaka ḥamīdun majīd repeats Q 11:73. The date is reckoned by the nights still to come in the month, as in other second-century texts.
Five months earlier, in Jumādā al-Ākhirah of the same year, a Saʿīd ibn Sālim recorded that he camped beneath a rock at Jabal al-Aqraʿ, north of al-ʿUlā, on his way to the ʿUmrah ( QMI-INS-055q ). The shared father’s name, the same year and the same region invite the thought that the two were brothers, though Sālim is a common name and the exact site of the present text is not published. A second, shorter inscription beside it reads «الله ثقة موسى بن بلال وكتب وهو يسأل الله الجنة» , “God is the trust of Mūsā ibn Bilāl; he wrote [this] asking God for Paradise”; it carries no date.
Source: Published by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Shāwī on X (formerly Twitter), 2 April. Reading as published; checked against the photograph by Ahmed W. Shaker.