The Monotheistic Inscriptions of Pre-Islamic Arabia

Every datable Jewish, Christian or ḥanīf inscription between roughly 400 to 630 CE, plotted onto the map of pre-Islamic Arabia. Huge thanks to Ilkka Lindstedt and his stellar work on pre-Islamic Arabian epigraphy for this idea, his own mapping of monotheist inscriptions in pre-Islamic Arabia (from his Muḥammad and His Followers in Context: The Religious Map of Late Antique Arabia) was the single most valuable source for this project.

Inscription type

Basemap: Natural Earth (public domain)

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Alhatlani, Abdullah Saad, and Ajab Mohammad Al-Otibi. “A Palaeo-Arabic Inscription from the Ḥismā Desert (Tabūk Region).” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 34, no. 1 (2023): 183–193. doi:10.1111/aae.12235
Al-Jallad, Ahmad. The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia: A Reconstruction Based on the Safaitic Inscriptions. Leiden: Brill, 2022. doi:10.1163/9789004504271
Al-Jallad, Ahmad. “The Pre-Islamic Basmala: Reflections on Its First Epigraphic Attestation and Its Original Significance.” Journal of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association (2022). PDF
Al-Jallad, Ahmad. Ancient Allah: An Epigraphic Reconstruction. 2025. Link
Al-Jallad, Ahmad, Ali al-Manaser, and Greg Fisher. “A Dated Paleo-Arabic Inscription Mentioning Al-Mundhir (ʾmndr) the King.” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy (2026). doi:10.1111/aae.70013
Al-Jallad, Ahmad, and Hythem Sidky. “A Paleo-Arabic Inscription on a Route North of Ṭāʾif.” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 33, no. 1 (2022): 202–215. doi:10.1111/aae.12203
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. doi:10.1086/729531
Athanassiadi, Polymnia, and Michael Frede, eds. Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Avanzini, Alessandra, ed. Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions. Digital Archive for the Study of Pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI). dasi.cnr.it
al-Bāriqī, Zāhir ʿĀṭif, and Christian Julien Robin. “Fragment of a Ḥimyarite Inscription Commissioned by King Abraha, with the Hypothetical Mention of Elephants.” 2025. Link
Bellamy, James A. “Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimāl.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 108, no. 3 (1988): 369–378.
Bonnéric, Julie. “Archaeological Evidence of an Early Islamic Monastery in the Centre of al-Quṣūr (Failaka Island, Kuwait).” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 32, no. 1 (2021): 153–171. doi:10.1111/aae.12182
Briquel Chatonnet, Françoise, George Kiraz, and Alessia Prioletta. “A First Syriac Inscription from the Area of Ḥimā (Najrān Province, Southern Saudi Arabia).” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 112 (2022): 37–49.
Carter, Robert. “Christianity in the Gulf during the First Centuries of Islam.” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 19, no. 1 (2008): 71–108.
Fisher, Greg, ed. Arabs and Empires before Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Fisher, Greg. Rome, Persia, and Arabia: Shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad. London: Routledge, 2020.
Gajda, Iwona. Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste: L’histoire de l’Arabie du Sud ancienne de la fin du IVe siècle de l’ère chrétienne jusqu’à l’avènement de l’islam. Paris: De Boccard, 2009.
Gajda, Iwona. “Religions of Ancient South Arabia: From Polytheism to Monotheism in the Context of Political, Economic and Social Evolutions (Fourth–Sixth Centuries CE).” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy (2025). doi:10.1111/aae.70017
Gatier, Pierre-Louis. “Les graffites grecs de Mabrak an-Naqah (Arabie Saoudite).” Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 31 (2020): 111–130.
Hoyland, Robert G. “Epigraphy and the Linguistic Background to the Qurʾān.” In The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context, edited by Gabriel S. Reynolds, 51–69. London: Routledge, 2008.
Hoyland, Robert G. “The Jews of the Hijaz in the Qurʾān and in Their Inscriptions.” In New Perspectives on the Qurʾān, edited by Gabriel S. Reynolds, 91–116. London: Routledge, 2011.
Insoll, Timothy, and Salman Al Mahari. Excavations at Samahij, Bahrain. University of Exeter and the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, 2024. Report
King, Geoffrey R. D. “A Nestorian Monastic Settlement on the Island of Ṣīr Banī Yās, Abu Dhabi.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 60, no. 2 (1997): 221–235.
Lindstedt, Ilkka. Muḥammad and His Followers in Context: The Religious Map of Late Antique Arabia. Leiden: Brill, 2024. doi:10.1163/9789004687134
Lindstedt, Ilkka. “A Map and List of the Monotheistic Inscriptions of Arabia, 400–600 CE.” Hadis ve Siyer Araştırmaları 10, no. 2 (2025): 275–283. PDF
Lindstedt, Ilkka. “Ethical Waṣiyyas on the Eve of Islam.” In Crossing Ancient Sacred Landscapes: Contacts and Continuities in the Ancient Desert Cults and Beliefs of Northern Arabia and the Arid Southern Levant, edited by Michael C. A. Macdonald and Juan Manuel Tebes. Oxford: Archaeopress, forthcoming.
Littmann, Enno. Semitic Inscriptions. Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria, Division IV. Leiden: Brill, 1914–1949.
Macdonald, Michael C. A. “Arabs, Arabias, and Arabic before Late Antiquity.” Topoi 16 (2009): 277–332.
Nehmé, Laïla. “Epigraphy on the Edges of the Roman Empire: A Study of the Nabataean Inscriptions and Related Material from the Darb al-Bakrah, Saudi Arabia, 1st–5th Century AD.” Habilitation thesis, EPHE, Paris, 2013.
Nehmé, Laïla, ed. The Darb al-Bakrah: A Caravan Route in North-West Arabia Discovered by Ali I. al-Ghabban. Catalogue of the Inscriptions. Riyadh: Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, 2018.
Nehmé, Laïla. “The Religious Landscape of Northwest Arabia as Reflected in the Nabataean, Nabataeo-Arabic and Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions.” Semitica et Classica 13 (2020): 127–154.
Nehmé, Laïla, ed. DiCoNab: The Digital Corpus of the Nabataean and Developing Arabic Inscriptions. 2024–. diconab.huma-num.fr
Power, Timothy, et al. “A Newly Discovered Late Antique Monastery and Islamic Town on Sīnīya Island, Umm al-Quwain.” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy (2023). Link
Robin, Christian Julien. “La réforme de l’écriture arabe à l’époque du califat médinois.” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 59 (2006): 319–364.
Robin, Christian Julien. “Abraha et la reconquête de l’Arabie déserte: un réexamen de l’inscription Ryckmans 506 = Murayghān 1.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2012): 1–93.
Robin, Christian Julien. “Ḥimyar, Aksūm, and Arabia Deserta in Late Antiquity.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 127–171. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Robin, Christian Julien. “The Judaism of the Ancient Kingdom of Ḥimyar in Arabia: A Discreet Conversion.” In Diversity and Rabbinization, edited by Gavin McDowell et al. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2021. Open access
Robin, Christian Julien, ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Ghabbān, and Fāyiz al-Saʿīd. “Inscriptions antiques de la région de Najrān (Arabie séoudite méridionale): nouveaux jalons pour l’histoire de l’écriture, de la langue et du calendrier arabes.” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 158, no. 3 (2014): 1033–1128.
Sinai, Nicolai. Rain-Giver, Bone-Breaker, Score-Settler: Allāh in Pre-Quranic Poetry. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2019. doi:10.5913/2019488259

The Monotheistic Inscriptions of Pre-Islamic Arabia

What the Map Shows

Bibliography