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Photo |
Description |
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Achaemenid Empire (Persia)
Denomination: Siglos
Time: 420-375 BC, reign of Xerxes II to Artaxerxes II
Weight: 5.48 g
Diameter: approx. 14.4 mm
Reference: Type IIIb
Obverse: Bearded Great King kneeling to right, holding bow and spear.
Reverse: Irregular oblong incuse. |
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Rashidun/early Umayyad Caliphate
Denomination: pseudo-Byzantine fals (imitation of Byzantine follis)
Mint: undetermined in Syria (Hims?)
Time: 636-670s AD
Weight: 4.61 g
Diameter: approx. 22.2 mm
Reference: ---
Obverse: Facing figure of crowned emperor beardless or with short beard, wearing chlamys, holding long cross-topped scepter and globus cruciger. Legend: indeterminable early Arabic or corrupted Greek/Latin.
Reverse: Large M indicating denomination of 40 nummi flanked by NN and XX, cross above, other indiscernible signs.
Comment: Early Islamic conquests were an earth-shattering event on many different levels. It was this that led to the de facto end of antiquity and the ancient way of life, true beginning of the Middle Ages. And it also led to the birth of two completely new magnificent civilizations. Not only the Islamic one, but also the one that will be later called the Western civilization. Hitherto the Latin West was just an appendix to the Roman world centered in Constantinople, but the advances of Islamic armies isolated the West from its metropolis and forced it to fend on its own. It's remarkable that initially Arabs weren't well accustomed to monetary economy and largely maintained the old financial structures intact including the Christian (and Zoroastrian in Persia) iconography; this refers both to their Roman and Persian conquests. Only in the 670s did Islamic coins stop being just imitations of the Roman (and Persian) ones and acquired their own specific templates. But it was only in the earliest 700s that a unique (though still deeply indebted to the Byzantine one) Islamic monetary system was born. |
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early Umayyad Caliphate, reign of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik (724-743 AD)
Denomination: dirham
Mint: Wasit
Time: 742-743 AD / 125 AH
Weight: 2.88 g
Diameter: approx. 24.6 mm
Reference: Album 137
Obverse: Arabic calligraphy.
Reverse: Arabic calligraphy.
Comment: First inkling of mature Islamic coinage. The Caliphate, thanks to its conquest and access to silver mines in modern Afghanistan, was able to mint large quantities of silver coinage, based on the late Sassanid one. This caused a mass inflow of silver into the Middle East, but also to the Mediterranean world. Perhaps because of this inflow, the Byzantine Empire was also able to mint silver coins in quantity again. |
