Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic rock inscriptions from Northwest Saudi Arabia - Risa Tokunaga,

Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic rock inscriptions from Northwest Saudi Arabia
Dr. Risa Tokunaga, Heritage Commission, Ministry of Culture,Saudi Arabia

This lecture diachronically overviews the rock inscriptions of the Hisma Plateau in Tabuk Province in northwest Saudi Arabia. Since prehistory, this area had been a crucial crossroads connecting Arabia with the Levant, Sinai, and beyond. During the first millennium BCE, it served as a trade route for incense caravans. Then, after the Nabataean and Roman rule, it came under the control of the Arab tribes by the end of the fourth century. After Islam, especially in the first and early second centuries (the 7th to the first half of the 8th century), it played a vital role as a route linking the two holy cities and Syria, the political centre of the Umayyad dynasty. The abundance of graffiti of various scripts observed in Hisma vividly illustrates the area’s historical distinctiveness. Furthermore, recent regional discoveries suggest a possible continuity of epigraphic habit from late antiquity to the early Islamic period.