60 Jere L.

Bacharach, Sherif
DOI 10.1515/islam-2012-0003
Anwar ISLAM 2012; 89(2): 60–69

Jere L. Bacharach, Sherif Anwar

Early Versions of the shahāda:

A Tombstone from Aswan of 71 A.H.,
the Dome of the Rock, and Contemporary
Coinage
Abstract: The article investigates the earliest appearance of a group of words
which are identified in the literature as the shahada but are rarely defined on the
assumption that everyone knows what the shahada is. The basic argument is that
there was more than one version of the shahada circulating in the Islamic world
at the beginning of the eighth decade A.H./690s C.E. and that scholars need to
define which version they mean when using the term “shahada” for this early
period. Evidence for the argument includes data from stelae from Aswan to the
Fatimid era, the Dome of the Rock and early Muslim coinage.

Jere L. Bacharach: University of Washington (Seattle), jere@uw.edu

Sherif Anwar: Cairo University, sherifcoins@yahoo.com

We will investigate the earliest appearance of a group of words which are ident-
ified in the literature as the shahada but are rarely defined on the assumption that
everyone knows what the shahada is. We shall argue that there was more than
one version of the shahada circulating in the Islamic world at the beginning of the
eighth decade A.H./690s C.E. Since the term shahada evokes in most minds in the
twenty first century the phrases la ilaha illa llahu muhammadun rasulu llah, “There
is no deity except God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God”, we shall use the term
“Affirmation of Faith” proceeded by an adjective indicating the place of origin to
differentiate them. There was an Egyptian version known from an Aswan stele, a
Syrian one known from the Dome of the Rock, an “Eastern” form known from nu-
mismatic evidence, and a different wording known from the all-epigraphic dinars
and dirhams which were first struck in 77/697 and 78/698 respectively and none of
them are exactly like the form of the shahada as we know it today.
Our contribution builds upon points made by Frédéric Bauden in his presen-
tation “Tombstone inscriptions and their potential as textual sources for social
history,” which he gave at an international conference on the Aswan stele (held in
Aswan, Egypt in 2010). One of Bauden’s critical observations was that a phrase,
once having appeared on a tombstone, it can be repeated over time without carry-

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 Early Versions of the shahāda 61

Figure 1: The tombstone of ^Abbasa b. Jurayj dated 71 H.

Reproduced from Hassan M. El-Hawary, JRAS 1932: 290.

ing its original meaning, that is, it becomes formulaic. If we wish to understand
the possible reasons for the inclusion of these words on a tombstone we must try
to ascertain when the specific phrasing first appeared. Bauden’s example was re-
lated to where exactly on the Aswan stelae texts references to the Prophet were
made. He found that in the early stelae from the first and second/seventh and
eighth centuries, they appeared in the middle or near the end of the inscribed text
but by the forth/tenth century references to the Prophet and his family appeared
near the beginning. He did not offer an explanation for this shift but challenged
us to think about this change as an example of the type of question which can
arise from studying a significant database of stelae inscriptions.

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62 Jere L. Bacharach, Sherif Anwar

In 1932 the Egyptian scholar Hassan El-Hawary, who was to establish his in-
ternational scholarly reputation with volumes on Egyptian Islamic funerary in-
scriptions and a volume on the stele inscriptions in Mecca, published an article
entitled “The Second Oldest Islamic Monument Known Dated A.H. 71 (A.D. 691).”1
El-Hawary shared with the readers of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society how
he had been sent on a special mission to Aswan by Gaston Wiet, the director of
the Museum of Arab Art (now the Museum of Islamic Art), and was told to exam-
ine some tombstones which Wiet had heard were to be found in some of the nu-
merous tombs in the “ancient cemetery east of Aswan.”2 Following this advice,
El-Hawary examined all the tombstones until he finally found the one dated 71
Hijra. He noted that “it was in a mausoleum on a hill with two domes in which 16
slabs were fixed.”3 He asked where the tombstone had been originally found
and could only learn that it was part of a large number of tombstones found in
Aswan’s cemeteries. These were eventually sent to Cairo’s Museum of Arab Art
where this example was registered as No. 9291:

1 Hassan Mohammed El-Hawary translated Gaston Wiet’s Album du Musée arabe du Caire
into Arabic and was (next to Wiet and Hussein Rached) one of the co-authors of the CIA volume
Catalogue général du Musée arabe du Caire. Stéles funéraires. Le Caire, Imprimerie de l’Institut
Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1932. See also his Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum
Arabicarum. Quatrième partie. Arabie. Inscriptions et monuments de la Mecque. Haram et Ka^ba.
Tome I, fascicule 1. Le Caire: Imprimerie de IFAO, 1939.
2 Hassan Mohammed El-Hawary, “The Second Oldest Islamic Monument Known, Dated A.H. 71
(A.D. 691). From the Time of the Omayyad Calif ’Abd-el-Malik ibn Marwan,” Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (JRAS) 1932 (no. 2), 289–93.
3 Ibid.

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 Early Versions of the shahāda 63

El-Hawary’s article focused on epigraphy and how the script fit with what was
known 80 years ago of early Kufic. This Egyptian scholar also noted that ^Abbasa,
the woman named on the stele, was the daughter of Jurayj [Little George] son
of Sanad, and that both names were associated with Copts [lines 5–6]. Therefore,
he concluded that she must have converted to Islam. From the data on the tomb-
stone he also determined that the date of her death was 14 Dhu l-Qa^da 71 or
21 April 691 C.E. [lines 8–10].4 Based upon his knowledge of the material remains
from early Islam this tombstone was the second oldest known Muslim tombstone
and, to the best of our knowledge, it still is.
The only other scholar we know who has dealt with this tombstone is Yeor
Halevi who studied it in the context of his 2007 book on funerals and the after-
life in early Islam.5 Halevi noted how the tombstone’s language reflected a very
clear Muslim identity unlike earlier evidence from the one earlier Aswan tomb-
stone dated 31 A.H. which El-Hawary had published in 1930.6 As Halevi ar-
gued, the tombstone’s language reflected ^Abbasa’s sense of belonging to the
“People of Islam” (ahl al-islam) [lines 2–3], a phrase which would continue to
be used on tombstones from Aswan into the third/tenth centuries.7 His other im-
portant point was that this old tombstone lacked any Qur’anic verse. Therefore
one of the opportunities raised by creating a corpus of the Aswan tombstones
is not only the opportunity to identify specific Qur’anic verses used on tomb-

4 El-Harawy’s calculation is, however, wrong. 21 April 691 was a Friday. If we take Monday as
the unmistaken date, it is probably Monday 17 April 71 which is closer to 12 Dhu l-Qa^da.
5 Yeor Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007. Published in Egypt as Rites for the Dead and the Afterlife in
Early Islam. Cairo: AUC Press, 2008.
6 Hassan Mohammed El-Hawary, “The Most Ancient Islamic Monument Known Dated A.H. 31
(A.D. 652), from the Time of the Third Calif ^Uthman,” JRAS 1930 (no.2), 121–33.
7 Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 20–21. Cf. also G. Wiet (references given above note 1), ‘Abd al-
Rahman M. ^Abd al-Tawab (Stèles islamiques de la nécropole d’Assouan, 3 vol., Le Caire:
Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1977–1982), and a more recent publi-
cation of Ahmed bin Umar al-Zayla’i, Tombstones in the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Kuwait.
Kuwait: Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, 1989/1409.

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64 Jere L. Bacharach, Sherif Anwar

stones from Aswan but also to specify when they were first included on tomb-
stones.
Turning now to the issue of the formula for the Muslim “affirmation of faith”,
we read on ‘Abbasa’s tombstone her confessing (wa-hiya tashhadu): alla ilaha illa
llahu / wahdahu la sharika lahu wa-anna / muhammadan ^abduhu wa-rasuluhu
salla llahu ^alayhi wa-sallama, “there is no deity except God, He alone, He has no
partner, and that Mu1ammad is His Servant and His Messenger” [lines 11–14].
Obviously there are a few parts not found in modern versions. The first is the
use of the word wahdahu, “He alone”, which demonstrates that from the earliest
material evidence Muslims were emphasizing their strict monotheism. The next
element which is different is la sharika lahu, “He has no partner”. Considering
that the Muslims must have constituted a tiny minority in Egypt in late 71/691, the
inclusion of the phrase la sharika lahu emphasizes the critical difference between
Muslims and Christians. Christians believe in the One God, but they also accept a
belief in the Trinity. Muslim rejection of this latter concept is encapsulated in the
phrase la sharika lahu. The third element which differs is the final phrase with
its reference to the Prophet Muhammad. The word rasul is present but not in the
modern form of Muhammadun rasulu llah but as part of a compound phrase in
which Muhammad’s roles as both God’s servant and apostle are mentioned.
Reviewing the large selection of dated Aswan tombstones illustrated in the
publications of Gaston Wiet, Hassan El-Hawary, Hussein Rached, and the later
work of ^Abd al-Rahman M. ^Abd al-Tawab, the same form of the “affirmation of
faith” can be found on many tombstones into the first decades of the fourth/tenth
century.8 Whatever meaning this combination of words carried at the time
‘Abbasa was buried and her tombstone carved, it is hard to imagine that it carried
the same meaning over the next two and a half centuries. What was once a form of
the Muslim “affirmation of faith” in the first century of Islam became a formulaic
element which was expected to be included on a tombstone assuming there
was enough room for it. It is probably with the Fa5imid dynasty that this formula
ended, but this last point will only be proved when a large enough body of tomb-
stone inscriptions is available to scholars.9 For purposes of this short essay, the
form of the “affirmation of faith” found on the late first century/seventh century
Aswan tombstone is called the Egyptian “affirmation of faith.”

8 For references see note 1 and 7.

9 In the published collection of tombstones owned by the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah in Kuwait,
the tombstone dated 269 A.H. contains the early Egyptian version of the shahada while one
dated 438 A.H. does not, but the latter includes surat al-Ikhlas. Ahmed bin Umar al-Zayla‘i,
Tombstones in Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah Kuwait. Kuwait, 1989–1409: Tombstones 2 and 4.

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 Early Versions of the shahāda 65

Contemporary with ‘Abbasa’s tombstone another version of the shahada can

be found in Jerusalem, specifically in the Dome of the Rock, which is traditionally
dated to 72/692. The Dome of the Rock, a commemorative building rather than a
mosque, was built in the form of an octagon with a double ambulatory. Dominat-
ing the interior are magnificent mosaics of complex images of jeweled vases cre-
ated specifically for this building.10 The second most obvious visual element in
the Dome of the Rock is a series of neutral designs such as geometric patterns that
appear to carry no meaning. Finally there are the inscriptions which were placed
“just below a cornice that supports the ceiling on either side of the octagonal ar-
cade.”11
The use of long inscriptions in Arabic on this building as on ‘Abbasa’s tomb-
stone signals a major shift for some Muslims as to what constituted an “Islamic”
symbol, in addition to being a means of transmitting messages.12 The placement
of these inscriptions in the outer and inner arcade below the ceiling may not have
been an innovation but an adoption of a tradition long practiced in the region by
Christian and Jewish communities.13 On the other hand the appearance of an ex-
tensive text in Arabic marks a significant break from the first six decades of Mus-
lim rule where public inscriptions in Arabic were relatively few and short as can
be concluded from the existing archaeological remains, material evidence includ-
ing coinage, and textual references.
The inscriptions in the outer arcade of the Dome of the Rock can be divided
into six segments divided by rosettes in which the wording in five of them closely
parallel one another. They all begin with the full basmala or bismi llahi l-rahmani
l-rahim, “In the name of God, the Magnificent, the Merciful”. The sixth segment is
a dedicatory statement which does not begin with the basmala and originally re-
ferred to ^Abd al-Malik as patron of the building with the date 72. The parallel
texts in the outer arcade create what we label as the Syrian “affirmation of faith.”

10 For recent scholarship on the Dome of the Rock with an extensive bibliography see Gülru
Necipoglu, “The Dome of the Rock as Palimpsest: ‘Abd al-Malik’s Grand Narrative and Sultan
Süleyman’s Glosses,” Muqarnas 25 (2008), 19–105. More has been written by Islamic art histori-
ans about the Dome of the Rock than on any other single building while more has been written on
the coinage of ‘Abd al-Malik to the all-epigraphic issues of 77 and 78 than on any Islamic numis-
matic topic. The lack of contemporary historical narratives as well as the importance of both
topics for the subsequent history of Muslim sponsored material culture may be the primary rea-
son for this intensive scholarly interest.
11 Oleg Grabar, Mohammed al-Asad, Abeer Audeh, and Said Nuseibeh, The Shape of the Holy:
Early Islamic Jerusalem. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, 56.
12 Estelle Whelan, “Forgotten Witness: Evidence for the Early Codification of the Qur’an,” JAOS
118 (1998), 1–13.
13 Ibid. 28.

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66 Jere L. Bacharach, Sherif Anwar

In all five versions which began with the full basmala, it was followed by la ilaha
illa llahu wahdahu, “There is no god except God, alone”. Four of them continue la
sharika lahu, “He has no partner”. In two segments the phrase la sharika lahu is
followed immediately by the words muhammadun rasulu llah, “Muhammad is the
Prophet of God”, while in the other three segments that began with the basmala
the words muhammadun rasulu llah are separated from la sharika lahu by addi-
tional pious phrases and/or Qur’anic verses. In this case we are defining the
Syrian “affirmation of faith” as bismi llahi l-rahmani l-rahim la ilaha illa llahu
wahdahu la sharika lahu muhammadun rasulu llah, “In the name of God the Mag-
nificent, he Merciful, There is no deity except God, alone, He has no partner, Mu-
hammad is the Prophet of God.”14
Therefore the Syrian version differs from the Egyptian “affirmation of faith”
by the physical connection of the basmala with the rest of the words while on the
Aswan tombstone they are separated by many lines of text. Second, this version
ends in the more familiar muhammadun rasulu llah rather than the more complex
formula on the Egyptian tombstone. The inclusion of the phrase la sharika lahu
reaffirms how Muslims differ from the majority of the Syrian population who were
Christians. Unfortunately all we can conclude is that the Egyptian and Syrian
forms of the “affirmation of faith” are different but not why, particularly since
both media – a monument and a tombstone – had enough space to have exactly
the same wording.
As we know from numismatic evidence, there was a different version of the
“affirmation of faith” circulating in Eastern Muslim lands.15 This version was in-
troduced into Syria in 72/692 but originated in Iraq. An excellent example is found
on the new style gold solidi minted by the Caliph ^Abd al-Malik in Damascus.
The coin imitates earlier Byzantine gold solidi which had images of the Byzantine
ruler Heraclius and his two sons Heraclius Constantinus and Heraclonas on the
obverse and on the reverse a cross on a four-stepped16 and the mint name for

14 The inscription in the inner arcade begins with the Syrian “affirmation of faith” through
la sharika lahu. The specific phrase Muhammadun rasulu llah does not appear in the extended
text although references to his prophethood and mission do. Most of the interior text relates to
Muslim beliefs about Jesus as a Prophet.
15 There are many scholarly discussions of the Arab-Sasanian and Arab-Byzantine coinage and
the appearance of pious phrases. An excellent place to begin with is the long introduction
by Album and Goodwin in Stephen Album and Tony Goodwin, Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the
Ashmolean Museum: Vol. I: The Pre-Reform Coinage of the Early Period, Oxford: Ashmolean
Museum, 2002.
16 For a fascinating discussion of the changes on this coinage see Stefan Heidemann, “The
Standing Caliph Type – the Object on the Reverse,” Coinage and History in the Seventh Century
Near East, Andrew Oddy, ed. (London: Archetype Publications, 2010): 23–34.

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 Early Versions of the shahāda 67

Figure 2: Arab-Byzantine solidi of Heraclius, Heraclius Constantine and Heraclonas attributed

to Damascus, 72 H. Sylloge of the Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean Museum 1, 607. Reproduced
with the permission of the Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum.

Constantinople across the bottom. The caliph removed some symbols such as the
cross but retained the general layout so that the coins would be accepted in the
market. For our purposes, the marginal inscription written in Arabic on the re-
verse in a clockwise direction is important. It reads bismi llahi la ilaha illa llahu
wahdahu muhammadun rasulu llah, “In the name of God, There is no deity except
God, He alone, Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
It differs from the other two contemporary versions of the “affirmation of
faith” in a few ways. The opening phrase has been reduced to bismi llahi, “In the
name of God”. This may reflect a simple continuation of the same phrase which
first appeared on the earliest Arab-Sasanian silver coinage or the lack of space on
a coin to write the full basmala. The more important difference is that in contrast
to the Syrian and Egyptian versions, the Eastern text does not include the phrase
la sharika lahu, “He has no partner”. To put it another way, while all three ver-
sions emphasize God’s unity and Muhammad’s mission, there is nothing specifi-
cally anti-Trinitarian about the Eastern “affirmation of faith.” This is not surpris-
ing since Christians were only one of a number of religious populations within
Muslim lands east of Greater Syria such as Iraq and there was no reason for any-
one ruling the eastern lands to single them out on the coinage.17

17 Malek Iradj Mochiri, “A Pahlavi Forerunner of the Umayyad Reformed Coinage,” Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society (1981), 168–72.

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68 Jere L. Bacharach, Sherif Anwar

Figure 3: Umayyad dirham, 79 H. without mint. Published with the permission of the Egyptian
National Library and Archives. Reg. 73. S.

Obverse Reverse

The final version of the “affirmation of faith” for which we have material evidence
rather than later narrative texts is found on the all-epigraphic coinage stuck in
77/697 and 78/698 by order of the Caliph ^Abd al-Malik (65–86/685–705) in the
form of new style gold coins (dinars) and silver ones (dirhams). In numismatics
the most important information the ruler wished to transmit is placed in the
center of a coin. On the dinars and dirhams the center of one side reads la ilaha
illa llahu wahdahu la sharika lahu, “There is no deity except God, He alone, He has
no partner”. Unlike the evidence from the Dome of the Rock or the coinage that
can be dated from 72/692, there is no bismi llah or full basmala at the beginning of
this version of the “affirmation of faith.” The message the caliph wished to trans-
mit with his new coinage related to God’s unity. This message was re-enforced by
placing in the center of the other side of the coin the well-known part of surat
al-Ikhlas which rejects the concept of the Trinity. To find a reference to Mu1am-

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 Early Versions of the shahāda 69

mad’s role as Prophet, the reader of the coin has to look on the inscription in the
margin encircling the center. The sense of a connection between the first phrases
and the words muhammadun rasulu llah “Muhammad is the Messenger of God”
is made even weaker because the reference to the Prophet appears on different
sides of the dinars and dirhams.
The version of the “affirmation of faith” on pre-all-epigraphic Umayyad
copper coins is almost the same one as found on the pre-77 gold and pre-78 silver
coins.18 Sometimes the version on the copper issues includes the basmala and
other times it does not. In the first case, the Arabic reads bismi llahi la ilaha illa
llahu wahdahu muhammadun rasulu llah, in the second case la ilaha illa llahu
wahdahu muhammadun rasulu llah.
The evidence for a specific policy for which version to use is not clear from
the limited numismatic evidence and it is safest to assume that both circulated as
equally valid. The possibility for variations only increased with the production of
the all-epigraphic copper coinage after ^Abd al-Malik’s monetary reform. One of
the more widely used coin types has la ilaha illa llahu wahdahu on one face and
muhammadun rasulu llah on the other. There are cases where only the first part of
the “affirmation of faith” appears without a reference to the prophethood of Mu-
hammad.
In conclusion, the evidence from one Muslim tombstone found in Aswan
allows us to demonstrate the growing use of religious language by Muslims and
how the language used was geographically specific. A careful reading of the
words on this tombstone demonstrate that the form of the “affirmation of faith”
used by these Muslims at the end of 71/691 in Egypt emphasized their difference
with Christians but, also, included a wording not found in Bilad al-Sham, and the
Eastern provinces of the Umayyad empire, nor on the dinars and dirhams pro-
duced less than a decade later. On the other hand, although different versions of
the Muslim “affirmation of faith” existed and must have circulated in Egypt, even
if only in the form of coinage, the tombstones continued to carry forward the
words first found on ‘Abbasa’s tombstone of 71 A.H. The formulaic power of the
earliest version of an “affirmation of faith” was so attractive that it was used on
many Egyptian tombstones for over the next 250 years. This does not mean that
other versions were not circulating in Egypt, only that they rarely appeared on
tombstones. Nor can our contribution answer the interesting question of when
Muslims adopted the modern version as the standard form of the shahada.

18 For examples see Clive Foss, Arab-Byzantine Coins: An Introduction with a Catalogue of the
Dumbarton Oaks Collection (Dumbarton Oaks Collection Publications 12), Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2008.

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