1/ Updating my pre-Islamic Arabia lecture and adding MFRAY-Qutra 1 -a fascinating Saba'ic inscription w/ relevance to the Qur'an

2/ Tired cliches abt pre-Islamic Arabia depict it as lawless and barbaric and cite the burial of infant girls as commonly accepted practice

3/ a practice (called wa'd in Arabic) said often to be 'first' forbidden by Qur'an (e.g., see quran.com/81/8 (etc.)

4/ However, already in the second century CE we see the practice legislated against in Sabaic inscriptions from S. Arabia

5/This Sabaic inscription from the city of Matirat (~ 40km NE of Sanaa) address this issue directly and legislates against it

6/ the last line of inscription reads "[May it be forbidden] to kill one's daughters in all of the commune of dhu-Matiratum..."

6/The point is not that the Qur'an borrowed from Sabaic inscriptions - rather, it engaged w/ and drew from the moral universe of Arabia

source of trans. (by C.J. Robin) books.google.com/books?id=GhAxC

@shahanSean

Professor, historian, specialist in Mashriqī Studies at 𝕿𝖍𝖊 @OhioState University #GoBucks