QMI-PRE-002 · Pre-Islamic
Inscription of ʿAbd Shams b. al-Mughīrah
نقش عبد شمس بن المغيرة
Ḥismā Desert, Tabūk region, north-western Arabia
- بسمك اللهم أبا عبد شمس يستغفر ربه
In your name, O God: Abū ʿAbd Shams asks forgiveness from his Lord
The inscription opens with bismika Allāhumma , which the article identifies as the first Palaeo-Arabic inscription attested with an opening invocation that names God as Allāhumma. It differs from Ḥanẓalah’s inscription ( QMI-PRE-001 ), which opens with bismika rabbanā . The article also counts it as the second Palaeo-Arabic inscription to call the Lord Rabb . The undated inscription of Abū Bakr ( QMI-INS-000 ) also comes from the Ḥismā desert.
Openings of the form bismika Allāhumma and bismika rabbanā belong to the pre-Islamic period, before the basmala bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm became the standard opening. The treaty of al-Ḥudaybiyya (6 AH) preserves this contrast. When the scribe was ordered to write the basmala, Suhayl ibn ʿAmr, the Qurayshi negotiator, objected that he did not know al-Raḥmān, and asked for the older formula, bismika Allāhumma , to be written instead (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Shurūṭ). The formula used here is therefore the one the Quraysh themselves preferred, which fits the article’s suggestion that the author belonged to that tribe.
The name ʿAbd Shams is written in Arabic script here, the first such attestation in the Palaeo-Arabic corpus according to the article. The author is named as the son of al-Mughīrah, and the article suggests he likely belonged to the Quraysh tribe. The first word can be read either as أنا ( ʾnā , “I”) or as أبا ( Abā , “father of”). This entry reads أبا, which fits the grammar of the sentence, so ʿAbd Shams appears here as a kunya, Abū ʿAbd Shams. The inscription was first documented by its finder, Muhammed Abdul Nayeem, and recently redocumented by the Saudi citizen Saleh al-Hwaiti.
The same opening, bismika Allāhumma , is used by ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlqamah, a Qurashī who accepted Islam late, in a text that ends with an Islamic bequest ( QMI-INS-000b ); the formula alone does not prove a pre-Islamic date.
Source: Alhatlani, Abdullah Saad, and Ajab Mohammad Al-Otibi. “A Palaeo-Arabic Inscription from the Ḥismā Desert (Tabūk Region).” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 34, no. 3 (2023). DOI: 10.1111/aae.12235.