To the uninitiated, distinguishing between these two near-identical gold coins (click here) is rather like a very upmarket game of spot-the-difference.
On both, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius stands, tall, proud and bearded, between his fresh-faced sons Heraclius Constantine and Heraclonas, in a 1,300-year-old dynastic portrait.
On their heads, the imperial family wear crowns; in their right hands, they carry orbs, symbols of their earthly power.
On the reverse, the coins even carry the same Latin inscription, “VICTORIA AVGU”, the same mint mark, for Constantinople, and a Byzantine cross mounted on steps – but a closer inspection reveals an important difference. Not by damage but by design, the second coin has had all of its Christian imagery removed from the crowns, from the orbs and from the cross itself.
The first coin is a Byzantine solidus, the common currency of the Christian Byzantine empire during the seventh century; the other is an example of one of the earliest forms of Islamic coinage, minted at the order of Muawiyah I, the scribe and secretary to the Prophet Mohammed and the one-time governor of Syria who was crowned in Jerusalem in 661AD as the first Umayyad caliph.
The coins speak of more than a change in currency and leadership. The 50-year period following the death of the Prophet Mohammed in year 11 of the Hijra (AH) (632AD) was a time when Arab armies shattered the political status quo in the Middle East, conquering Egypt and Syria, Iraq and Iran in just a few decades.
By the 690s, the people of Syria had been living under Islamic rule for decades, yet the common currency still featured Byzantine emperors and Christian imagery – so the production of hybrid coins such as the “Islamised” solidus, marks an important step, not just towards the stability associated with an empire that could control the quantity and quality of its own money supply, but to a situation where it could also stamp that confidence and authority on its coinage.
We now understand that the changes associated with the Arab invasions were permanent, but for people living at the time, the only certainty was change, and this modified solidus, as well as many of the other gold and silver Islamic coins that will be auctioned in Geneva later this month, testify to the sense of transition that defined the spread and early development of Islam.
The auction is the work of Alain Baron, a renowned Swiss numismatist who has called Abu Dhabi his home for the past three years. It has taken Baron more than two years to assemble the auction’s 668 lots, 92 of which are Islamic.
“We have tried to present the whole Islamic history since the time of the Prophet through coins in a very pedagogical way,” the 52-year-old explains. “And we’ve already been getting a lot of positive responses from the western world, from people saying they did not know that Islamic coins could be so interesting.”
In terms of the auction, that history begins with the modified Byzantine solidus, but soon moves to Iran and Iraq and the ruins of the far older Sassanian empire.
“The solidus is something hybrid,” explains Baron. “It’s not Arab, but it’s not Christian anymore either, so it’s somewhere in between – a declaration of independence in gold and silver that is the first step towards a different identity.
“What is very interesting when we talk about Islamic coins is that virtually right after the Prophet, we see production of silver and gold coins in the Iran/Afghanistan region, and again the Arabs took the coins that were already in circulation, the Sassanian coins, and replaced some of the original Pahlavi inscriptions with Arabic. It was a way of declaring their independence.”
A coin from the southern Islamic town of Istakhr (which is now in southern Iran), minted at some point in the early 690s, illustrates Baron’s point and bears, the Swiss believes, a very early image of a Muslim convert.
Wearing a typical Sassanian crown, the figure is shown pointing both forefingers to the sky, a gesture that was associated with the recognition of God’s uniqueness and that was often required of new converts to Islam.
For Baron however, it’s another coin, made in Basra in 75AH (694AD) that’s one of the Islamic highlights of the sale. Minted by the city’s Arabic governor Bishr ibn Marwan, it’s the only silver coin ever issued that shows the caliph at prayer.
“This coin is historically so important that we put it on the cover of the auction catalogue. Just imagine. We are 73 years after the Hijra, and we have a completely new pattern emerging. They have moved away from the old Sassanian model and are now depicting a caliph praying with his priests,” Baron enthuses.
“This is a completely Arabic coin, but it includes a human representation. Not only does that make it extremely rare, but it was only minted for one year and then it disappeared.”
Bishr ibn Marwan was the brother of Abd Al-Malik ibn Marwan, ninth caliph, and leader of the faithful to rule in succession of the Prophet Mohammed. From his capital in Damascus, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, made Arabic the empire’s official language of government and introduced a new form of currency that set the pattern for Islamic coinage.
Minted in the 77AH (697AD), only two years after the issue of the silver drachme that showed the caliph at prayer, Abd al-Malik’s new golden dinar was devoid of all representation and carried only words adapted from the Quran.
“The caliph introduced a whole new administration that enabled the Umayyads to strike [coins] all over the empire that were all the same weight,” Baron explains. “All of the silver coins at this time were dated and they also included the name of the mint where the coin was struck. That makes the coins important historical documents, because they help us understand the extent of the empire at the time.”
To illustrate his point, Baron points to a previously unknown dirham from 86AH (705AD) that was minted in Tiflis, Georgia, and another that identifies a previously unknown mint, Al Hind, which he believes may refer to the town of Multan in Pakistan.
For Baron, the discovery of previously unknown Islamic coins and mints is exciting, in part because it’s the kind of discovery that’s now almost inconceivable with coins produced and collected elsewhere.
“Finding coins from new mints and with new dates would hardly ever happen with western coinage, because it has been so extensively collected and studied for hundreds of years, but there is no structured collecting of Islamic coins in the Islamic world yet.”
Although the sale may be in Geneva, Baron hopes that it will have an effect that’s closer to the UAE, and admits that it was the prospect of developing an Islamic market for Islamic coins that drew him to life in the Middle East in the first place.
“I have always thought that the effort that Abu Dhabi is making to develop its new museums is a very great thing, but I also look at it as a challenge, because, for me, passion is about transmission,” the numismatist explains.
“Coin collecting and coin study almost doesn’t exist in this part of the world. You build a Louvre, you build a Guggenheim and you build a Zayed [National Museum], so you need to build a centre for the study of coins.
“There are large Islamic coin collections, such as those held at the British Museum and in Paris, but I think that collectors in the Arab world are only just starting to realise how important coins are for their culture.”
For Baron, his 2012 sale in Geneva of a full set of Umayyad gold dinars, which contained coins from all 56 years of the dynasty, is a source of pride but also frustration, as the coins, including the exceedingly rare first issue from the year 77AH (697AD), were bought by a western collector.
“It took the collector a long, long time to put that collection together. It would have been a great opportunity for the Arab world to acquire that set, but it was sold to a European collector,” Baron explains.
“They sold for a little less than US$2 million [Dh7.3m], all-in-all. You can pay $2 million for a Ferrari. Why not pay that for your patrimony? Of course, I don’t blame anybody here, but if we had had the proper means and the will to inform people in the Arab world, then I’m sure somebody would have gone for it.
“We have access to information that is very important to the Arab world, but that information has never been distributed properly – but hopefully, by the time people find out that you can own a coin, a witness, that a follower of the Prophet may have held in their own hands, then I think that things may change.”
The auction will take place on November 24 and 25 at the Hôtel Beau Rivage, Geneva, Switzerland, with viewings on November 23 and 24. For more information, visit www.ngsa.ch.
nleech@thenational.ae