Pre-Islamic Christian inscriptions in Arabic script (Zabad 512, Jabal Usays 528, Harran 568)
512 – 568
Place: syria · coming soon
No coordinates. This node is on the timeline only.
The inscriptions are physical objects. Readings of some words remain debated. (Harran here is the Hawran village in Syria, not Harran in Turkey.)
A trilingual church dedication at Zabad near Aleppo (512), a graffito at Jabal Usays (528) and a martyrium inscription at Harran in the Hawran (568) are among the earliest texts in the Arabic script. Two of them are explicitly Christian. They show Christian Arabs writing Arabic in the century before the Qur'an.
People named here
- Sharahil ibn Zalim (Harran 568)
Links
Report and reading
Out
Was there an Arabic Bible before Islam?
Christian Arabic writing existed before Islam, but no biblical text in Arabic survives.
evidence_for
attested
Context
In
Simeon Stylites and the conversion of Arab pilgrims
Holy-man missions among Syrian Arabs led to the Christian Arabic writing of the 6th century.
context
scholarly hypothesisIn
Ghassanids: Christian Arab kings for Byzantium (al-Jabiya)
The Harran (568) martyrium inscription is a Ghassanid-era Christian Arabic text.
context
attested
Sources
- Wikipedia: Zabad inscription
Wikipedia contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0). Accessed 2026-11-11.
- Wikipedia: Harran inscription
Wikipedia contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0). Accessed 2026-11-11.
- Greg Fisher, Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity (2011)
Oxford University Press. Accessed 2026-11-11.