Amikam Elad. "An Epitaph of the Slave Girl of the Grandson of the ÝAbbÁsid Caliph al-MaÞmÙn." Le Museon. Vol. CXI (1998), pp. 227-244. (original) (raw)

An Epitaph of the Slave Girl of the Grandson of the 'Abbasid Caliph al-Ma'mun

Le Muséon, 1998

In the Name of God the Merciful and Compassionate 2) This is the grave of the slave girl (the mother of children) 2 of Musa b. Ya{qu-3) b b. al-Maˆmun surnamed 3 Umm MuÌammad 4) She died leaving behind 20 of her children and g-5) randchildren; all of them and she herself 4 were afraid of her d-2 Umm walad. 3 This word: al-mukannat, is quite rare. In the many hundreds of funerary inscriptions I have read (1st/7th to the 80's of the 4th/10th centuries), I found only three inscriptions in which this word occurs; cf.

Islamic Tombstones for Slaves from Abbasid-Era Egypt

Slavery & Abolition, 2023

This article studies tombstones from eighth- to tenth-century CE Egypt that are designed to mark the grave of a Muslim slave. These funerary inscriptions are unusual in that they do not marginalise the enslaved as much as do other early Islamic sources. Furthermore, they reveal otherwise undocumented attitudes towards persons who died as slaves. Offering a thick description of an unpublished tombstone for a ninth-century concubine-mother (umm walad), the present article analyses tombstones for slaves from two perspectives. It first studies the representation of the enslaved and the specific terminology that tombstones used to designate the deceased as enslaved. It then turns to the commemorative context of tombstones, arguing that tombstones of slaves served similar purposes, and used similar illocutionary strategies, to those used by contemporary tombstones for free Muslims. Despite these similarities between tombstones of free and enslaved persons, we see that deceased slaves were commemorated as members of the Muslim community as well as the legal property of their owners.

THE ARABIC INSCRIPTION ON ABŪ ˓UBAYDA’S SHRINE IN JORDAN

The migration of shrines, particularly of famous personalities, or martyrs is a common phenomenon in Islam as well as in other cultures. In this paper the Mamlýk inscription, dated 1277, over the tomb in ˓Ammatā (Jordan) of Abý ˓Ubaydah, the close companion of the Prophet, and supreme commander of the Muslim army during the Syrian campaign in the 7th century, is studied against the background of the migration of his grave and the conflicting reports about his death. At least four places are mentioned as his burial place: ˓Amawās (Emmaus) in western Palestine, Tiberias, ˓Ammatā in Trans-Jordan, and a place to the north of ©amāh in Syria. There are even traditions that he was buried in Beth Shean (Baysān, Scythopolis) and in Damascus. The inscription, which provides details about the income dedicated to the maintenance of the shrine, marks probably the end of a process that led to the selection of this sanctuary over the others, but leaves the conflicting reports about the general's death and its circumstances open.

A woman's Hismaic inscription from the Wādī Ramm desert: AMJ 2/J.14202 (Amman Museum)

Norris, J., A woman’s Hismaic inscription from the Wādī Ramm desert: AMJ 2/J.14202 (Amman Museum), Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 28, 2017: 90–109., 2017

This article focuses on an unpublished Hismaic (Thamudic E) inscription housed in the Amman Museum (AMJ 2/J.14202), which was discovered in 1981 by W.J. Jobling in the area of W ad ı Ramm, southwestern Jordan. The text presents some interest for the study of the history and language of the nomadic tribes who lived in southern Transjordan and northern Arabia in antiquity, as it represents a rare example of an inscription carved by a woman and because it contains the first attestation, in Hismaic, of the feminine singular form of the relative pronoun ḏ.