QMI-INS-065 · 169 AH
Inscription of Sufyān ibn Jubayr al-Mālikī, near al-Ruwayshid
نقش سفيان بن جبير المالكي، 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).
- اللهم مالك الملك رحمن
- الدنيا ورحمن الآخر انت
- رحمن ورحيم بهما ارحمني في
- حاجتي رحمة يغنيني بها عن رحمة
- من سوائك وكتب سفيان
- بن جبير المالكي سنة تسع وستـ⟨يـ⟩ن ومئة
O God, Possessor of sovereignty, the Merciful in this world and the Merciful in the hereafter, You are Merciful and Compassionate in both of them. Be merciful in my needs with a mercy that makes superfluous the mercy of other (beings) than You; and wrote Sufyān son of Jubayr al-Mālikī, year nine and sixty and one hundred.
A prayer for mercy by Sufyān ibn Jubayr al-Mālikī, dated 169 AH (785–786 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. It opens with mālik al-mulk, “Possessor of sovereignty” (Qurʾān 3:26). Lindstedt notes that in line 6 the writer left out one denticle of sittīn (“sixty”), and that the interpretation of line 3 is not completely certain.
Source: Lindstedt, Ilkka. “Early Islamic Inscriptions from Northeast Jordan.” Studia Orientalia Electronica 12 (2024): 35–66, DOI 10.23993/store.136123, pp. 44–45, no. 3, fig. 3.