A fascinating new article on the inscriptions of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Riḥāb, Jordan, dating to the late 6th - early 7th c. CE, with an appendix of epitaphs from the Roman period. A time capsule from Roman/Byzantine Arabia.
Let's look at some of the tombstones discovered at the ecclesiastical complex.
This one belongs to a man named غانم بن أوس Ġānem ben Aws, who died in 211/212 CE.
Young بدر badar perished at 16 years old.
جد بن حنين
Gadd ben Ḥonayn, member of the city council of Bostra, however, lived to the ripe old age of 90.
Another young man, مليك mileyk, son of Theodoros, died at the age of 18.
The man elusive Arabic name transcribed in Greek as Σοαιφος is probably the equivalent of the name ḍʿf attested in Safaitic, likely pronounce [ɬˁoʕaipʰ] in this period, literally 'weakling'.
Many of the lovely mosaics were effaced and replaced by geometric figures by iconophobes in the 8th-9th c. CE; this phenomenon, as the authors point out, proves that Christians worshipped at this church well into the Abbasid period (p. 114).
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1341222426017996800
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