QMI-INS-055u · 109 AH
Inscription of Bilād Thumālah
نقش بلاد ثمالة
Bilād Thumālah, south of al-Ṭāʾif
- بالله يؤمن عبد [العزيز] بن أبي [العـ..]
- لا يشرك به ...
- وكتب في شعبان سنة تسع ومئة
In God believes ʿAbd [al-ʿAzīz] ibn Abī [al-ʿ…]; he associates nothing with Him … And [this] was written in Shaʿbān of the year one hundred and nine.
A profession of faith dated Shaʿbān 109 AH (November–December 727 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. The writer declares that he believes in God and associates nothing with Him — the negation of shirk that recurs in the professions of faith of this catalog. The stone lies loose in an abandoned farm in Bilād Thumālah, south of al-Ṭāʾif, and several of its edges are broken, perhaps because of a nearby road; its first publisher found a broken fragment and tried to fit it back in place. The breaks have taken parts of the writer’s name and of his father’s, which are restored here only tentatively (ʿAbd [al-ʿAzīz] ibn Abī [al-ʿ…]), and part of the middle of the text. The reading and the line division given here follow the first publication and should be treated as provisional. Four inscriptions of this catalog are dated to 109 AH; of the three that give a month, this one falls between the prayer of Sulaymān ibn Maḥmūd at Petra (no. 55r, Rabīʿ al-Ākhir) and the inscription of Wādī Shīreh (no. 55f, Ramaḍān).
Source: al-Thumālī, ʿAbdallāh Muṣliḥ (@thoomaly11). Photograph and reading posted on X (formerly Twitter), 23 June 2020 (first publication; the inscription was pointed out to him by @bnasd123).