QMI-INS-055wa · 121 AH
Inscription of al-Ḥārith ibn Ṣāghir
نقش الحارث بن صاغر
Qārat al-Nayṣah, east of Dūmat al-Jandal, al-Jawf
- بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
- اللهم أغفر للحارث
- بن صاغر ما تقدم من ذ
- نبه وما تأخر آمين ثم آ
- آمين رب محمد وإ
- براهيم رب العالمين و
- كتب في واحدة و
- عشرين ومائة سنة
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. O God, forgive al-Ḥārith ibn Ṣāghir what he has done before and what he has left after. Āmīn. Then ā[…] Āmīn, Lord of Muḥammad and […] [Ibrā]hīm, Lord of the worlds, and […] [this] was written in the year one hundred and twenty-one.
A prayer for forgiveness dated 121 AH (739 CE), in the caliphate of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. The inscription records a petition for God to forgive al-Ḥārith ibn Ṣāghir his past and future sins, followed by a formula of invocation (“Āmīn, Lord of Muḥammad and Ibrāhīm, Lord of the worlds”). It is the earliest dated Islamic inscription known in the al-Jawf region, and the inscriptions that follow it there are dated 144 AH (Yaʿlā ibn Yazīd), 184 AH (Mudrik ibn al-ʿAlāʾ), 186 AH (al-Ḥakam ibn al-Ashʿak), and 518 AH (the founding inscription of Qaṣr Qadīr). The reading follows the published text, with the lacunae of the photograph left as in the source.
Source: al-Sulaymī, Mālik. Published 18 August 2023. Field information supplied by the author.