QMI-INS-064 · 158 AH
Inscription of (al-)Aktal ibn ʿĀmir, near al-Ruwayshid
نقش الأكتل بن عامر، قرب الرويشد
Jordanian panhandle, near the town of al-Ruwayshid, northeast Jordan, on the border of the basalt desert (ḥarra) and the inner desert (ḥamād).
- [ان ا]لاكىل بن عامر يشهد الا
- [اله] الا اللـه وحده لا شريك له
- [يسلـ]ك اللهم بعزتك وبقدرتك
- وبعظمك وبسلطانك ان يزحزحه
- عن الناربرحمتك ويدخله
- الجنة يرزق فيها بغير حساب
- وغفر لمن قرا هذا
- الكتاب وقال آمين رب
- العالمين وكتب سنة
- [ثـ]ـمان وخمسين ومائة
Al-Aktal son of ʿĀmir testifies that there is no god but God alone, He has no partners. He asks you, O God, with your majesty, strength, greatness, and power, that you keep him away from hellfire with Your mercy, and make him enter paradise, where he is nourished to excess. And forgive who reads this inscription and says, “Amen, Lord of the world.” And he wrote / was written in the year eight and fifty and one hundred.
A testimony of faith with a prayer, dated 158 AH (774–775 CE). The inscription was recorded in 2018 by the Badia Epigraphic Survey, led by Ali Al-Manaser and Michael Macdonald, near al-Ruwayshid in the Jordanian panhandle, and published by Ilkka Lindstedt in 2024. The phrase yuzaḥziḥahu ʿan al-nār (“that you keep him away from hellfire”) is, in Lindstedt’s words, unusual in early Islamic-era graffiti. It refers to Qurʾān 3:185 (fa-man zuḥziḥa ʿani l-nāri wa-ʾudkhila l-jannata fa-qad fāza), which the writer modified by adding bi-raḥmatika between hellfire and paradise. The word ʿālamīn is written in plene spelling, which Lindstedt notes is quite rare in early Islamic inscriptions.
Source: Lindstedt, Ilkka. “Early Islamic Inscriptions from Northeast Jordan.” Studia Orientalia Electronica 12 (2024): 35–66, DOI 10.23993/store.136123, pp. 43–44, no. 2, fig. 2.