76 OFF TO DERBENT
must have been rebuilt, as we know that the ramparts were more than once destroyed, at least in part. This tablet, so far as legible, reads : ^ —
[1] ' In the Name of God the Merci[2]ful, the Compassionate, the Lord of the Day of Judgment. [3] We worship Thee, and we beg help of Thee. [4j . . . [5] In the month of Rajab of the year [in the margin] 435 [a.h. = March, 1044 a.d.].'
The lower of the two tablets is similar and runs : —
[1] < In the Name of God the [2] Merciful, the Compassionate. [3] There is no God but Allah. Muhammed is [4] the Prophet of God. • • • [5] We worship Thee (?), we beg help of Thee (?). He has repaired (?) and caused it to be rebuilt (?).'
The third, or lowest, inscription is in Syriac characters, but it has not yet been wholly deciphered, so I reserve it for repro- duction and publication later.
Securing copies of these three tablets gave a new verve to fur- ther researches, and I led the way, followed by my guide, the pho- tographer, and the more active members of the mob, at a lively pace up the hill to Narin-Kalah, the citadel. The height of this fortress was now to be scaled with an aim different, I imagine, from that at any time when it had been mounted before ; not the booty of conquest, but the historic treasures of the past were in view. To my delight, high up on the projecting flange of the city wall, where it joins the fortress, I found carved (this time in Syriac letters) a name M(?}arni8a bar Kais, * Marnisa, the son of Kais,' as my friend Dr. Yohannan reads it.^ At the foot of the rampart, almost perpendicularly under this stone and carved close to the ground, is still another name in the same character, repeated with a slight variant, but apparently to be read ^A^llah Malklso (or WndnUo}, probably written by a
1 For the decipherment of the two olas A. Koenig, Lecturer at Columbia,
inscriptions from the photograph, so and to Dr. Yohannan and Professor
far as the letters in it are legible, sup- Gottheil.
plemented by my transcript, I am 2 -phe first letter is not quite dis-
indebted to the kindness of Dr. Nich- tinct : instead of M it may be T or B.
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