Madīna or Miʾdhana? Revisiting the ‘Foundation Inscription’ of Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī

Abstract In the early 19th century J.-B. Rousseau included the following phrase in his reading of the well-known inscription from the Umayyad site of Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī – ‘… This town ( madīna ) was built by order of ʿAbd Allāh Hishām, Commander of the Believers …’. A century later Charles Clermont-Ganneau argued that the Arabic term in question was miʾdhana rather than madīna . The revised reading was rejected (or ignored) by successive generations of scholars, but new data shows that Clermont-Ganneau was right. This paper examines the reasons for the rejection of the miʾdhana reading and outlines the implications of its reinstatement.