The location, composition, and evidence engraved on its rocks gave uniqueness to the “Mount of the Ship” southwest of the city of Tabuk, gaining the name from its details that appear to the viewer from afar in the form of a ship anchored in the desert.
And the “Mountain of the Ship” mediates the desert of Hisma, which is present in the history record. Since time immemorial, it was a station on the ancient trade route to and from the Arabian Peninsula, and caravans and riders passed through it along the successive human civilizations, and this explains the diversity and abundance of archaeological inscriptions on the rocks of the mountain, while the frequency of mentioning Hisma In pre-Islamic and Islamic poetry.
Historians describe the "Mount of the Ship" as a blog full of Thamudic inscriptions dating back more than 2,600 years, as well as Arabic writings for the period before and after Islam in an early time, passing through the successive Islamic eras. In the first kufic line without punctuation in the first century of migration, as a kind of documentation of their travels and conditions.
Among the phrases was what one of them inscribed, “Oh God, forgive Muhammad bin Ibrahim bin Nafeh, the mawla of Abu Huraira, for his great sin,” dated in the year 120 AH, and another inscription, “I am Umar bin Suwayd. I recommend everyone with knowledge to benefit from his knowledge.”
There are many writings and inscriptions, which indicate the historical heritage of this mountain that is of importance to researchers in the depths of history and the development of the Arabic language. The site was the first to discover some Arabic inscriptions, later known as the "Hasma'i dialect", which is an Arabic dialect similar to the Nabataean dialect and is considered the first An Arabic writing in which the letters are linked to each other, as in the Kufic script.
These ancient evidences carry a legacy that speaks to an aspect of the history of the Arabian Peninsula and its eternal language.
SPA (Tabuk)
