Thread by @shahanSean

Some comments on these 2 graffiti (this will have to be quick as I'm in the middle of a move). The 1st one reads:
"I am ʿAmr ibn Rabīʿah al-Ṯaqafī; I wrote this in year of [the conquest of the province of?] Africa/Ifrīqiyyah."
When was this graffito written? Which year is this?

https://twitter.com/thoomaly11/status/1143588123139596289

The short answer: we don't know. There were many Arab incursions into Roman North Africa and its provinces throughout the seventh century from the caliphate of ʿUthmān onward, although there are a few 'famous' battles. I suppose that any one of them could be referred to here.

For more precision, we get a little help from biographical accounts of the death of the prophet Muḥammad’s wife, Ḥafṣah bint ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. She reputedly died ‘in the year of the conquest of Ifrīqiyyah’, according to Mālik ibn Anas.

Often this statement is taken to refer to the 3rd Umayyad expedition of Muʿāwiyah ibn Ḥudayj in 50 AH/670 CE, not the first expedition of Ibn Abī Sarḥ in 17 AH. See comments of Abū Zurʿah al-Dimashqī in his Tārīḫ below.

Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī even uses the exact phrase ʿām ʾifrīqiyyah|عام إفريقية in his entry for Ḥafṣah in his Maʿrifat al-ṣaḥābah. @therealsidky @bareem11

I'd date the inscription to the second half of the first/seventh century. It's likely the earliest reference to the name 'Africa' in Arabic attested anywhere, even earlier than a papyrus published by Yūsuf Rāġib in 1991
ilm-project.net/fr/content/la-…

This particular graffito was posted earlier by @AlsahraTeam on their blog:
alsahra.org/?p=19052tbc tbc on graffito #2 ...