Umayyad
Abd al-Malik's Coinage and Chancery Reform
The first epigraphic dinar, c. 77 AH
c. 77 AH / 696 CE
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
Damascus, the Umayyad mint and central chancery
33.5102, 36.2913 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
Around 77 AH (696-697 CE) the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (r. 65-86 AH / 685-705 CE) completed two reforms that turned the caliphate from an Arab ruling class administering conquered empires in their own languages and coin into a state with its own. The first was the coinage. Until then the Muslims had used the Byzantine gold solidus, stamped with the emperor and the cross, and the Sasanian silver drachm, with its royal bust and fire-altar, along with a brief experiment in 'standing caliph' coins bearing a figure of the ruler. Abd al-Malik replaced them all with a wholly new money: an aniconic, purely epigraphic gold dinar carrying no image of any living thing, only Arabic inscriptions, the declaration of faith, verses of the Qur'an including the chapter affirming the oneness of God, and the mint and date. The dinar was struck to a fixed weight (the mithqal, about 4.25 grams), and a matching silver dirham followed within two years. The reform was at once economic, religious, and political: the sources (al-Baladhuri) tie it to a dispute with the Byzantine emperor over the inscriptions on coins and papyrus, and the new money answered the figural Christian coinage of Justinian II with an uncompromisingly Islamic and imageless statement, the monetary counterpart of the Qur'anic inscriptions Abd al-Malik had set in the Dome of the Rock a few years earlier. The second reform was the Arabisation of the diwan: Abd al-Malik ordered the financial registers of the provinces, kept in Greek in Syria and in Pahlavi Persian in Iraq, to be translated and thereafter maintained in Arabic, making Arabic for the first time the single language of the imperial chancery (al-Jahshiyari's history of the secretaries preserves the episode). Together the reforms gave the Muslim state a unified currency and a unified administrative language, the durable instruments of an empire that now governed in its own terms. This scene depicts the mint and chancery at Damascus: iron dies cut with Arabic alone, blanks and finished dinars beside the superseded Byzantine and Sasanian coin, and parallel registers in which the old languages give way, column by column, to Arabic.
What you see
On the workbenches lie iron coin dies cut in reverse with Arabic inscription alone, no portrait, no animal, no cross, beside blank gold flans waiting to be struck; an aniconic, purely epigraphic money being made, not an imitation of an imperial coin.
A finished gold piece carries only words: the declaration of faith and lines of the Qur'an affirming the oneness of God, with the mint and the date. It is set against the coins it replaces, a Byzantine solidus stamped with the emperor and the cross, and a Sasanian-type drachm with its royal bust and fire-altar.
Among the discarded older types lies a transitional 'standing caliph' coin showing a robed, sworded figure of the ruler, the brief experiment that this very reform abolishes in favour of pure script, dating the scene to the turn of the reform.
Clerks work over parallel registers: one column in Greek or in Pahlavi Persian, the next in Arabic, the financial diwan of the provinces being translated and, from now on, kept in Arabic, the moment the state's own language replaces those of the empires it conquered.
Balance scales and small glass weight-discs stamped with Arabic check each coin against a fixed standard, the mithqal weight of the new dinar, the deliberate regularity of a state-controlled currency rather than weighed bullion of mixed origin.
Nowhere in the workshop is there an image of a living thing on the new money, a deliberate aniconic statement answering the figural Christian coinage of the Byzantine emperor, the monetary counterpart of the Qur'anic inscriptions set a few years earlier in the Dome of the Rock.
The chancery is an Umayyad hall in the Roman city of Damascus, dressed stone and round arches, the administration of a confident dynasty at its capital, not the mudbrick of early Madinah nor the later brick palaces of Abbasid Iraq.
Primary sources
al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan (9th c.): Standard Sunni history. Principal narrative source for Abd al-Malik's coinage reform, including the account that it arose from a dispute with the Byzantine emperor over the inscriptions on coins and papyrus protocols. Confidence high.
Further reading & cross-references
al-Jahshiyari, Kitab al-Wuzara wa-al-Kuttab (10th c.): Sunni history of the viziers and secretaries. Preserves the Arabisation of the diwan, the translation of the Syrian (Greek) and Iraqi (Pahlavi) financial registers into Arabic under Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj. Confidence high for the administrative episode.
al-Maqrizi, Shudhur al-Uqud fi Dhikr al-Nuqud and al-Khitat (15th c.): Sunni historian's treatise on coinage and his topography of Egypt. Used for the later Muslim memory of the dinar/dirham reform and the mithqal standard. Confidence medium-high (a late but careful compilation).
Umayyad reformed dinars of 77 AH and Umayyad glass coin-weights (extant): Material cross-reference. The surviving aniconic gold dinars dated 77 AH onward, and the stamped glass weight-discs from Egypt, confirm the date, the purely epigraphic design, the Qur'anic legends, and the controlled mithqal standard. The decisive physical evidence. Confidence high.
Clive Foss, Arab-Byzantine Coins (Dumbarton Oaks, 2008): Modern numismatic catalogue and study. Used for the transition from imitative and 'standing caliph' types to the reformed epigraphic coinage, and the dating of the change. Confidence high.
Chase F. Robinson, Abd al-Malik (Makers of the Muslim World, 2005): Modern academic biography. Used for the political and religious program tying the coinage, the Dome of the Rock, and the Arabisation of the chancery into a single assertion of Islamic statehood. Confidence high.
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