THE HARĀN INSCRIPTION

(568 a.d.)

The Harān inscription is an inscription in Greek and Arabic, chiselled into the lintel of Saint John the Baptist’s Martyrium in Harān, Syria, north west of Djebel el-Druze.

In the inscription, sketched by Wetzstein in the 19^th century, the “martyrium,” is designated in the Arabic text by the last two words (reading from right to left) of the first line: dâ l-mrtûl, “this martyrium.” These two words are on either side of the Greek cross with flared arms inscribed within a circle.

Sharâhîl, son of Zâlmû. I built this martyrium
in 463. After [the] ruin.
[?]
[the] sweetness.

 The Greek text specifies that “the martyrium,” to mart (urion), is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. The Greek served as a basis for attempts to decipher the Arabic,● object of an abundant bibliography. After the first word of line 2 that can be read snt, “year,” come Nabataean symbols that are used in the notation of numbers: “First 4 and the sign of hundreds, then three times the sign 20 and finally three bars of unity”●; that is year 463 of Bosra, year 568 of our era.

Thus, as Melchior de Vogüé had already understood in the 19^th century, “the writing known as Kufic, which was thought to have been be invented in the city of Kufa after Islamism, was in reality in existence as early as 568 a.d.”● A simple comparison with a page from the manuscript ‘Arabic 328’ in the National Library of Paris (figure F of the insert) in fact reveals a striking resemblance between the letters engraved on the lintel of the Martyrium of Harān and the large thick letters traced in brown ink on a sheet of parchment, after the fashion of the Egyptian papyri of the 7^th century: the same slanting of the upstrokes; the same stiff and angular writing, an ornamental appearance, corresponding to an awkward written form, on a resistant and somewhat rough medium like parchment. Its evolution, however, is not yet finished: the ‘ayn of the words b‘d (line 2) and n‘m (line 4) is still Hebraic, despite Février’s assertion to the contrary.●

The final formula is an act of faith and hope in the blessed resurrection.