52 Proceedings of the EoynJ Irish Academy. 



be ^ " jJ^ r ' this is indeed the tomb': but I have never met vritb 

 this classical form in an Arabic inscription, unless in Koran 

 quotations, i,.::^ /j . as third person feminine, does not agree witli 

 its masc. subject ^L^. Possibly it is c:^'ij, 'thou badst forsaken'. 

 In any case it is a very peculiar phrase. .^J should be ,^jj^ . The 

 phrase ,..*:,^.^' ^ l^ iJ=»5 etc., oddlv as it is expressed, 

 can only mean that the Hijra happened ninety-five years before. 

 The formulas *K!^ ^ and ,»J^ ^\ call for special notice. 4^^ ^, 

 'the sentence ends', equivalent to 'end of extract" oi fnis, may 

 possibly imply that the inscription is copied from an earlier document.^ 

 *Jj:. «u!^ . ' God is All-knowing' or ' God knovrs best' is a phrase, 

 like Jj:\ i^\, that suggests some doubt on the part of the writer 

 as to the accuracy of the statement. As to the names of the 

 deceased, they may be read simply Salam ibn Salah, ' Peace (or 

 security) son of Prayer' (for ^'»Ltf), which might possibly be names 

 adopted by a native convert ; or the first name should have teshdid 

 and should be read Sal 1am, a not unusual Muslim name in the first 

 century of Islam, whilst the second may either be a mistake for 

 iLs , Silah, or possibly a form of the root ^.^:,,^ with the meaning of 



ci^La^, ' strong.' 



"We have therefore in this curious inscription an epitaph on a 

 Muslim who is stated to have died in the year 95 of the Hijra, 



1 Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts in the British 

 Museum, informs me, however, that this phrase is characteristically West African, 

 and that he has seen it in a draft inscription in ahsurdly bad Arabic composed by 

 a "West African native for a memorial stone to soldiers who feU in the recent 

 AsTianti expeditiou. He has also met with such names as Tawhid and Ya-sin 

 among West African negroes, which wotild he parallels to 'Peace' and 'Prayer' 

 in the present inscription. That this inscription is not "West African, however, 

 is conclusively proved, not only by its provenance, but by the pointing of the fe 

 and kafi, which are differently pointed in the Maghrahi script. 



