You Won't Believe This: These Rock Inscriptions Deny The Traditional Origin Of Islam!

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Popular devotion to Muhammad as a prophet, not the what we see on the coins earlier with Abd al-Malik and also on the Dome of the Rock, which is looking probably looking at himself, and as a messenger, which makes the Islamic traditions incredibly awkward because the Islamic traditions who would don't even begin to appear for another century after this, they don't even begin to appear to 833 and 870, they say that this all began with Muhammad, not according to the inscriptions, not according to the coins. This all happened much, much later. So, there is a 100-year silence prior to this that indicates that Islam did not exist as a distinct religion until long after the time of Muhammad, which casts doubt on whether he had any part in starting Islam.

[00:00:46]>> [music] >> Welcome to Events [music] in History, where we explore the origins, teachings, and historical development of Islam with a fact-based [music] analytical approach. What if the earliest evidence for Islam's origins doesn't come from Mecca at all?

[00:01:05]In this episode, we dive into one of the most explosive discoveries in the entire Islamic world, the rock inscriptions of the 7th century. And according to the evidence, they tell a story radically different from the traditional Islamic narrative.

[00:01:22]Dr. Jay Smith and Al-Fadi unpack why thousands of ancient inscriptions found across Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the Negev contain almost no mention of Islam, Muhammad, Mecca, or even the Quran during the very period Muhammad was supposed to be leading a religious revolution.

[00:01:44]Instead, the earliest references only begin appearing decades later, and they emerge far north of Arabia in Petra, Iraq, Damascus, and Persia.

[00:01:56]Even more shocking, the inscriptions match the same Nabataean Aramaic patterns found in early Quranic manuscripts and early qiblas pointing toward Petra.

[00:02:07]Could the historical foundations of Islam have formed somewhere completely different? This episode connects the dots between archaeology, language, coins, and inscriptions, and early Islamic history in a way that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew. Let's watch the video. Hello everyone. This is Al Fadi. I'd like to welcome you back to this amazing series about the search for Muhammad or the quest for Muhammad. And today's title is telling. We intentionally title it rock inscriptions also tell a different story. And that's exactly what we are going to focus on today in our search for the real Muhammad. With me here in studio is Dr. Jay Smith to unpack this.

[00:02:54]Dr. Jay, thank you so much.

[00:02:55]>> No, it's good to be here. Thank you. So, what do rock inscriptions tell us about Muhammad?

[00:03:00]>> Well, very similar to what the coins tell us. Now, why are we surprised by that? Because again, we're going back to the 7th century looking for the evidence on the ground. Coins are great evidence because they don't be they aren't disintegrating, they don't deteriorate.

[00:03:14]Rock inscriptions are also equally good at because they don't disintegrate, they don't deteriorate. They're made out of rock. Rock and metal, you can see will last for centuries and centuries and they're almost as good today as the day they in case of the coins minted or in case of rock inscription in case the time when they were chiseled out by the those who who are creating the rock inscriptions. When we look at the what what was happening with the rock inscriptions. Let's go ahead and let's look at the slides and when you want to look at the map there, many of the rock inscriptions what but the rock inscriptions that we're finding were all up in the north. 30,000 of them have now been found and it's fascinating they they surveyed in places like Arabia, the Negev, Transjordan, Syria with possibly another 70,000 more yet to do. So, there's a whole lot yet to do, but they can't find rock inscriptions from the 7th century in Mecca and Medina. One would expect it to be Mecca and Medina if these were being written at the time Muhammad lived because that's where the Hajj was, that's where all people would come down to in Mecca to do the come to the sanctuary of course. So, that's what they would do the five stages of the Hajj, but nothing nothing is done that far south. All of them are if they were down that far south, they would have been also been written in this type of Arabic. Like we talked about this in another episode, the Sabaic Arabic which has dots and vowels in it. And yet we know that none of these inscriptions have dots and vowels. There's just 16 consonantal letters and those 16 consonantal letters all come from up here. Where is the red the red rectangle, the small one at the top north? That is today parts of Israel, parts of Syria, and parts of Jordan. In fact, it's fascinating because this Nabataean Aramaic comes from Petra. Petra, why have we heard about Petra before?

[00:05:02]Gibson's material, Gibson's research.

[00:05:04]>> yeah. The Qiblas are all facing. So, the very same place where this this all this Arabic that we see in the rock inscription, which is also in the Quran, also is this Nabataean Aramaic is all from the same place that the Qiblas are all facing. Can you see how this all fits together? Right. And that's why you need to look and see everything that Gibson was talking about from 1979 up until 2004 when he did his research on the Qiblas were all facing not Mecca where they should have been facing if the traditions were correct. They should have been facing Mecca. They are none of them are facing Mecca. They're all facing the same area where this Nabataean Aramaic is coming from and where all these rock inscriptions are being formed. Now, we see the map there.

[00:05:45]Let's now look at what some of let's look at it on a timeline cuz you need to see this on a timeline not just the map but get those get that in front of you. There is the map. Look at the Nabataean Aramaic in the north and look at the Sabaic script in the south. Islamic traditions.

[00:06:00]So we're talking about Ibn Ishaq, we're talking about Al-Waqidi, we're talking about Al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Ibn Dawud, Tirmidhi, and Al-Tabari. These guys that we've been talking about for so long. That's they're the ones that tell us it all happens Mecca Medina.

[00:06:11]Take a look and see what Ilkka Lindstedt who is probably by the world authority on the rock inscriptions. He looked at a hundred rock that he dated from 640 to 740. So that's the time period we're looking for. We want to look at this period because 640 is immediately after Muhammad's death all the way up to 740.

[00:06:28]That's immediately before the Abbasids come into power.

[00:06:30]>> And I want to bring that in there because that's so important because that would be the beginning of Islam. This would have be it should have be have these inscriptions have reference after reference to something Quranic cuz this is the time period that the Umayyads really come into power and the rightly guided caliphs. Rightly guided caliphs become with start with Muhammad in 624 but include Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali up until 661 and then the Umayyads come into power from 661 all the way up until 749. So these inscriptions are all during that period.

[00:07:01]Mostly the Umayyad period and the rightly guided caliphs. So what does he find? Well, he looks at them and he notices this. He says prior to 690 look at there prior to 690 there is no evidence in these inscriptions these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of inscriptions no evidence of anything Islamic at all.

[00:07:21]Well, where have we heard that before?

[00:07:22]Yeah, with the coins. That's right. The same thing we find with the coins you'll find on the rock inscriptions.

[00:07:28]Exact same thing. Nothing about Muhammad, nothing about Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Uthman, or Ali, nothing about people called Muslims, nothing about a religion called Islam, nothing about a city called Mecca, and nothing that is Quranic.

[00:07:42]And yet these inscriptions are from the that area and from that time period. So he goes on and he says that except for some formula from pre 690 and these formula are not Islamic formula. These are not the formula that we see today.

[00:07:57]These are pre-Islamic formula. That's all you find from 690 on. Look at that green line. I'm going to keep that green line right there at 690, okay? I'm going to keep that green line right there.

[00:08:07]From 690 to 710, this prophet's name is introduced. Well, we know that on the inscriptions, that's also introduced on the Dome of the Rock in 691. It's also done on the coins in 692. It's also introduced on the caliphate protocols in 691. So the exact same time period we see on the coins and the and also on the Dome of the Rock and on the caliphate protocols, it's also that prophet that name, if it is prophet, we're still I'm still on the fence on that one. I don't think that is the prophet Muhammad. I think it's actually aggrandizing of the Malik. I think he's saying himself that he's referring to the blessed one of God. But that begins to appear from 690 up to 710.

[00:08:46]Then from 710 to 720, you see these Muslim rights begin to appear. The pilgrimage starts to appear. Wait a minute, I thought they were doing a pilgrimage at the time of Muhammad. No, it only begins after 710 on these inscriptions. And it talks about the prayers.

[00:09:01]These are the prayers, if you look at the Quran, there's only three, you start to see these prayers, these same three prayers being introduced on the rock inscriptions.

[00:09:08]Right.

[00:09:08]>> And also the fast. So these are what we know as the deen of Islam. These are the practices of Islam. But they only get begin to appear in from 710 up into 720, that time period, that 10-year period.

[00:09:19]And then from 720 to 730, the next 10-year period, he says, "Take a look and all the rock inscriptions start introducing this name Muslim and this name Islam."

[00:09:30]Now you can see who these people are. So they start to start from this time, from 720 to 730, they start creating themselves as a people. In contradistinction to whom? In contradistinction to the Christians and the Jews. Mhm. How Hold on a minute.

[00:09:47]This is the time period where the Kitab then begin to a form. Now I can you see why the Kitab start to begin to introduce in 736? Because the inscriptions are showing what is happening here. You now have this discussion going on between the Christians and Jews and it's all starting there in Kufa and in Iraq and Bastora and up in Syria in Damascus.

[00:10:05]These inscriptions follow the same sequence. Islam is referred to a specific group all always in contradistinction to those other cousins, those other cousins who are from Abraham, but they're not like us because we are Ishmaelites, we are Mahajun, but now we are known as Muslims.

[00:10:20]>> Right. That's the nomenclature. Look at the Iraq inscriptions and you can see the sequence how of Islam is beginning to form. So let's look at conclusion. It was only in the 730s, remember Muhammad supposedly died in 632. So almost 100 years later.

[00:10:34]>> This is 100 years later that there is evidence of popular devotion to Muhammad as a prophet, not the what we see on the coins earlier with Abd al-Malik and also on the Dome of the Rock, which is looking probably looking at himself and as a messenger, which makes the Islamic traditions incredibly awkward because the Islamic traditions who who don't even begin to appear for another century after this, they don't even begin to appear to 833 and 870, they say that this all began with Muhammad, not according to the inscriptions, not according to the coins. This all happens much, much later. So there is a 100 year silence prior to this that indicates that Islam did not exist as a distinct religion until long after the time of Muhammad, which cast doubt on whether he had any part in starting Islam.

[00:11:22]So after everything Dr. Jay and Alpha D have examined in this episode, the big question becomes impossible to ignore.

[00:11:31]Why is the earliest physical evidence telling a completely different story from the later Islamic traditions?

[00:11:39]The coins point north, the kiblas point north, the language points north, and now the rock inscriptions, thousands of them, are also pointing north. Yet the traditional narrative insists everything began in Mecca.

[00:11:55]What makes this so significant is the timeline. According to the inscriptions themselves, there's almost complete silence about Islam, Muhammad, Muslim identity, pilgrimage practices, and even Quranic language until decades after Muhammad supposedly died. Then suddenly, beginning around the late 7th and early 8th century, all these elements start appearing together, almost like a movement being formalized in real time.

[00:12:27]That changes the conversation entirely.

[00:12:30]This is no longer just theology, this is archaeology, linguistics, and history colliding head-on with tradition. And if the earliest evidence doesn't support the traditional story, then we have to ask the uncomfortable question, are we looking at the origins of Islam or the later construction of it?

[00:12:51]Thank you for watching this video.

[00:12:54]Please like and share this video so others can see it. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications for more Islamic history content. Stay with us as we sift through history to find out what the standard Islamic narrative on the Islamic Awareness website is hiding regarding the origin of Islam.

[00:13:15]Jesus is Lord.

[00:13:23]>> [music] >> Hey.