Islamic 22mm silver coin - dirham?

[E Pinniger]

I got this 22mm diameter silver Islamic coin (or, rather, about two-thirds of a coin) in a small lot of British detector-found hammered coins (it'd be interesting to know how it got to these shores). I'm fairly certain, based on other coins I've seen, that it's a dirham - but I've no idea of the issuing state, reign or date. Can anyone here help me attribute it further? Hopefully I've got the coin the right way up in the photos!

[rick2]

This should be an Abbasid dirhem

the left Picture is the key to identify the coin.

in the field you have the standard Kalima
outside you have two circular legends.

the inner circular legend should contain the bismillah , with mint and date.

i can only read a small part and to me (still a beginner) it looks like the date could be something like "theman wa temanin wa miatain" 288 AH (901 ad) which would correspont to Al Mutadid

i cant really read the first part of the date or find the part where it say Sanat and the mintname which should be somewhere at the bottom of coin.

it s unusual to find these coins in britain, because at this time britain was a small place at the edge of the world relying on barter and having no proper coinage , having said that this coins were the dollars of the day and were the most common coins of the time

hope it helps

[rick2]

i cant work out the mint.
but i would exclude Madinal Al Salam (Baghdad) which is the most common mint

[E Pinniger]

Thanks for the help! Quite a bit older (901 AD) than I expected, I know coins like this were minted over many centuries and I guessed mine would be around the 13th-14th century.
Unfortunately I can't read a word of Arabic so not much chance of me working out the mint myself - I've more or less got the hang of reading the Greek alphabet and may eventually manage others like Hebrew and Nabataean, but the way the letters flow together in Arabic makes it very hard to decipher if you're used to separate characters!

I'm not 100% certain that this coin was found in the UK, it was in a lot of other detector-found mediaeval coins which were definitely British finds, but the seller could well have added some unwanted coins from his own collection! But these coins, and their gold equivalent the dinar, circulated very widely as trade coins around this date, so much that some European kingdoms actually made their own imitations to use in trade, so it's certainly a possibility. There are numerous mediaeval European coins that turn up regularly in Britain, such as Venetian soldi.

[rick2]

venetian soldi are well documented and are found in Britain because they were used as half pennies. They were accepted because they were made of good silver

these are strange finds. they could have been used as trade coins but they were usually melted.

i saw a hoard of islamic coins in the british museum found on a wreck and destined to be melted

[Robert_Brenchley]

All sorts of coins found their way into Britain along the trade routes. I don't have any problem believing it's a UK find.

[monty]

there were a number of islamic coins from a viking hoard found in yorkshire with a metal detector a few years ago. i will try to find more information.

[monty]

here is a link to the "vale of york hoard" that contained similar coins-

http://hoard.org.uk/hoards/vale-of-york.htm

[bakkar]

This dirham bears the mint of al-Shash and dated 158AH.

Best regards
Bakkar

[Robert_Brenchley]

The Scandinavians traded with the Arabs, and Islamic coins are found there, so it's not surprising that they brought them here as well.

[rick2]

there were a number of islamic coins from a viking hoard found in yorkshire with a metal detector a few years ago. i will try to find more information.

there are large numbers of viking hoards containing islamic coins.
a lot of them found their way from afghanistan via the russian river.

one of the most surprising find were samanids multiple dirhem that were minted in northern afghanistan

[rick2]

This dirham bears the mint of al-Shash and dated 158AH.

Best regards
Bakkar

at least i got one right !

I can see how i got fifty and eighty wrong ( HAMSHIN and THEMANIN)
but i cant see where you see 100 miat , i assumed that the letter that looked like a J at the top excluded miat and was part of MIATAIN (200)

also where does the mint name starts ?

i still got lots to learn.......

btw 158 would make the coin a lot more common than the date i suggested. however the mintmark
is a better one.

[Robert_Brenchley]

one of the most surprising find were samanids multiple dirhem that were minted in northern afghanistan

To make much sense of that we'd need to know the find distribution for these. I've never heard that Scandinavian traders went east of Constantinople, but there could well have been trade routes from there to Afghanistan, which would account for the coins getting that far.

[rick2]

the vikings traded with afghanistan through extensive trade routes through russia and the russian rivers.

i can provide details but i m pretty sure batches of afghan coins were found in scandinavia in vikings hoards

[Robert_Brenchley]

They certainly traded with Russia, but the river routes won't get you anywhere near Afghanistan. How far did they go in person?

[Jim Roberts]

I agree with Bakkar that the mint is al-Shash, but on the bottom line of the reverse I think I see the name of the Samanid ruler Isma'il b Ahmad who ruled in the 280's.  And the style is of that period, not a century earlier.  That would make it Album 1443.