Lane-Poole — On an Arabic Insoiptionfroin Rhodesia. 53 



or A.D. 713-714. There is nothing whatever to suggest that it is a 

 forgery. Its history is perfectly straightforward. It was brought 

 some eight or nine years ago from what appeared to be * an ancient 

 temple' in Matabeleland — unfortunately all inquiries have failed 

 to trace the site — to Mr. P. Hanbury France, an agent of the 

 Union Steamship Company at Cape Town. Mr. France attached no 

 importance to it, and gave it as a curiosity to Dr. W. M. Russell, 

 a surgeon on that line of steamers, who afterwards practised at 

 Kimberley, and Dr. Russell passed it on to Mr. G. S. Gary, of 

 Terenure, Co. Dublin, in whose possession it remains. No one in 

 South Africa could have forged it, nor is there any motive for 

 forgery. Moreover, forgers follow received types, and this in- 

 scription is peculiar in many ways. Nor do I believe that it was 

 imported. The inscription is too unusual in diction to have been 

 composed at any educated Mohammadan centre, but its peculiarities 

 and grammatical errors are natural in such an out-of-the-way place as 

 southern Rhodesia. I am told that there is no marble in Rhodesia, 

 but this remains to be proved. Arabs do not caiTy tombstones about 

 with them on their travels, nor can I imagine such an inscription 

 entering the mind of an Arab of Arabia or a Muslim of Egypt : the 

 language is too bizarre. 



Assuming the inscription to have been engrayed in Rhodesia 

 and set up over the tomb of this Sallam son of Salah, the question 

 remains, is it the original epitaph or merely a commemorative tablet 

 erected in later times ? The style of writing is no certain guide, 

 since we possess no other specimens from the same region, and 

 without dated examples epigraphic science cannot exist. The 

 Arabic character varies so greatly at different places in different 

 ages that it would be rash to draw conclusions from similar styles 

 of inscriptional nashhl elsewhere. Still, judging roughly by the 

 character, it is impossible to believe that it goes back so far as the 



