C 1143

Interpretation

Provenance: The name "Rijm Qaʿqūl" was applied by nineteenth-century travellers to at least four large outcrops at the southern end of the Ruḥba, to the south and south-west of the modern water tower. This helps to explain the curious fact that there is no overlapping between the "Rijm Qaʿqūl" copies of de Vogüé, Wetzstein and Dussaud & Macler, and only in a very few cases between those of de Vogüé and Waddington who were travelling together. The probability that there were multiple cairns with this name is supported by the fact that that while Waddington wrote that it was 10 minutes [ride] from al-ʿUdaysīyah to Rijm Qaʿqūl, Dussaud & Macler say that the journey between the two took 30 minutes. In 1995, the Safaitic Epigraphic Survey Programme identified the sites visited by Wetzstein and by Dusaud & Macler but did not find those where de Vogüé and Waddington had worked. The inscriptions found at Rijm Qaʿqūl "A" were all texts copied by Wetzstein and no one else. It is likely therefore that this is the place he regarded as "Rijm Qaʿqūl". Note that the co-ordinates given here are very approximate.

Ryckmans, G. Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum: Pars Quinta, Inscriptiones Saracenicae Continens: Tomus I, Fasciculus I, Inscriptiones Safaiticae. Paris: E Reipublicae Typographeo, 1950–1951.
de Vogüé, M. Syrie Centrale. Inscriptions sémitiques. Paris: Baudry, 1868-1877.