QMI-PRE-001 · c. 7th
Inscription of Ḥanẓalah b. ʿAbd ʿAmr
نقش حنظلة بن عبد عمرو
Karmat ʿAddās al-Naṣrānī, near al-Ṭāʾif
- بسمك ربنا
- أنا حنظلة بن
- عبد عمرو
- أوصي ببر الله
In your name, our Lord I am Ḥanẓalah son of ʿAbd-ʿAmr I urge (you) to be pious towards God
Found on a boulder about 100 m uphill from an abandoned mosque attributed to ʿAlī, in karmat ʿAddās al-Naṣrānī near al-Ṭāʾif. The inscription is undated. Its Paleo-Arabic script points to the late 6th or early 7th century CE, before the oldest surviving Qurʾanic manuscripts. The opening formula b-sm-k rb-n is a variant of bismika allāhumma, which the Quraysh used before the Islamic basmala was standardized, and its “Lord” (rabb) rather than “God” (Allāh) also points to a pre-Islamic date. Both this opening and bismika Allāhumma predate the standard basmala, which was not yet the accepted opening of a text at this time. Compare the Ḥismā inscription of ʿAbd Shams b. al-Mughīrah (QMI-PRE-002), which opens with bismika Allāhumma.
Source: Al-Jallad, Ahmad, and Hythem Sidky. “A Paleo-Arabic Inscription of a Companion of Muhammad?” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 83, no. 1 (2024): 1–14.