Abstract
AbstractFor the past fifty years, there has been a debate over whether the Umayyad caliph Muʿāwiya introduced a short-lived gold coinage in Syria. After reappraising the literary evidence, this study argues that an enigmatic phrase in a papyrus from this period constitutes evidence for state enforcement of the circulation of a new kind of gold coinage issued under Muʿāwiya. A die-study of the extant specimens of a peculiar imitation of Byzantine gold which has had its crosses effaced, and has been attributed to Muʿāwiya on the basis of the testimony of literary sources, confirms them to be the result of a large-scale, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, initiative. This demonstrates that, in addition to the east, there also existed a separate drive towards an expansion of the money supply in Syria-Egypt during the latter half of Muʿāwiya's caliphate, a development which testifies to a relatively substantial programme of state-building by the caliph.
Highlights
Minting of gold being, most of the time, a near-monopoly of the imperial capital, Constantinople.[4]
After reappraising the literary evidence, this study argues that an enigmatic phrase in a papyrus from this period constitutes evidence for state enforcement of the circulation of a new kind of gold coinage issued under Muāwiya
A diestudy of the extant specimens of a peculiar imitation of Byzantine gold which has had its crosses effaced, and has been attributed to Muāwiya on the basis of the testimony of literary sources, confirms them to be the result of a large-scale, albeit unsuccessful, initiative
Summary
In the introductory discussion to his catalogue of the Arab-Byzantine coins in the British Museum, Walker produced a report from al-Maqrīzī (d. 845 AH/ 1442 CE), according to which Muāwiya “struck dinars with a sword-girt figure on them” (wa-ḍaraba muāwiya ayḍan danānīralayhā timthālun mutaqallidan sayfan).[20]. Bates has drawn attention to a passage in the Chronographia of the Byzantine monk and historian Theophanes the Confessor on the unusual appearance of the coins sent as tribute to Byzantium byAbd al-Malik shortly after the close of the Second Civil War, based on which he argues that the reform of the coinage and the introduction of a gold denomination must have begun underAbd al-Malik.[55] Theophanes’s report might be construed as conflicting with the Maronite chronicler’s, but a closer inspection of the two texts’ wording would reveal this apparent conflict to be illusory. Little significance ought to be attached to the phrase sanat qaḍāal-muminīn, as, not being an appellation used by the early believers[73] for their reckoning system, its potential to shed light on the meaning and significance they attached to their calendar is very limited.[74]
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