QMI-INS-055x · 131 AH
Inscription of ʿUmar ibn ʿUthmān
نقش عمر بن عثمان
Ghadīr Rawāwah, al-Madīnah region
- أنا عمر بن
- عثمن (عثمان) اسل (أسأل) ا
- لله الشهدة (الشهادة)
- في سبيله وكتب
- سنة إحدى وثلين (وثلاثين) ومئة
I am ʿUmar ibn ʿUthmān. I ask Go- d for martyrdom in His path. And [this] was written in the year one and thirty and one hundred.
A prayer for martyrdom “in His path” (fī sabīlihi), dated by year alone, 131 AH (748–749 CE), in the caliphate of Marwān ibn Muḥammad, the last Umayyad caliph, as the ʿAbbāsid revolution was advancing from Khurāsān towards Iraq. ʿUmar ibn ʿUthmān introduces himself in the first person (“I am …”) and asks God for shahādah — a petition not met elsewhere in this catalog, whose writers more often ask for mercy, forgiveness or paradise. The phrase is a standard one in early Muslim piety and need not point to any particular campaign. The spelling is of its time: “ʿUthmān”, “shahādah” and “thalāthīn” are all written without their long alif (عثمن، الشهدة، ثلين), and “asʾalu” is written “asl” without a seat for the hamzah (اسل), as in the inscription of ʿAbdallāh ibn Mundhqān a year later (no. 55p, 132 AH); the writer also divides the name of God across the line end (a-/llāh), as does the writer of no. 55p. The inscription was documented by Muḥammad al-Mughadhdhawī at Ghadīr Rawāwah in the region of al-Madīnah on 12 December 2019.
Source: al-Mughadhdhawī, Muḥammad (@mohammed93athar). Photograph and reading documented at Ghadīr Rawāwah, al-Madīnah region, 12 December 2019; posted on X (formerly Twitter).