QMI-INS-055w · 121 AH
Inscription of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ
نقش عبد الله بن عمر بن حفص
Location unpublished
- تاب الله على عبد
- الله بن عمر بن حفص
- وكتب سنة إ
- حدى وعشرين
- ومائة
May God turn in forgiveness to ʿAbd- allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ. And [this] was written in the year o- ne and twenty and one hundred.
A prayer that God may “turn” (tāba) to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ — that is, accept his repentance and forgive him — dated by year alone, 121 AH (738–739 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. The letters are large and boldly cut across the face of a boulder, and the writer divides both his own name (ʿAbd-/allāh) and the numeral (i-/ḥdā) across the line ends. The name invites comparison with two other inscriptions of this catalog: ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ (no. 55, 100 AH) and Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar (no. 55e, 108 AH). The sources on the descendants of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb name a Medinan family in which ʿAbdallāh and ʿĀṣim were both sons of ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb; ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar al-ʿUmarī was a known transmitter of ḥadīth in al-Madīnah. If the writers of no. 55 and of this inscription are those two brothers, the family of Rabāḥ ibn Ḥafṣ ibn ʿĀṣim (nos. 43 and 54) would be represented by several hands across the first quarter of the second century AH. This remains a possibility only, as all of these names were common. His brother ʿĀṣim left a prayer with the same wording in the same year, 121 AH (QMI-INS-055wb), and the thesis of Alhatlani (2021, ch. 2, no. 89) places this text at Rawāwah, near al-Madīnah, measuring 41 × 53 cm.
Source: al-Mughadhdhawī, Muḥammad (@mohammed93athar). Photograph and reading posted on X (formerly Twitter), 29 October 2015.