I have been told that the Tomin was the smallest coin issued by Spain, and that in Spain Tominejo is another name for hummingbird, because it is so small. Have been trying to find a picture of a Tomin coin, just curious. Only found this entry in Wikiwand: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tomin with no picture Does anyone know more?
Never heard of a tomin. Toman, yes, but that's not Spanish. (I wonder if they have similar root words.)
Quite possible. Quoted from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/spain-relations-persia-16-17-century "Despite Spain’s remoteness from Persia, Spanish-Persian relations trace back to al-Andalos (a geographical term used in Islamic sources in reference to the area of Spain and Portugal), when the presence of people and cultural materials from Persia reached its highest level. From the age of al-Andalus (711) to the Nasrid kingdom of Granada (1492), informal and cultural contacts with Persia were possible not only for Andalusian traders, travelers, and those who made the pilgrimage to Mecca (ḥajj), but also for Persians who, under various circumstances, traveled to the Islamic West (Shafa, pp. 143-190)." But it seems the Toman is larger than the Tomin. The Tomin is very elusive - too small, no trace of one of them on the web
Andalusian Arabic ثُمْن (ṯúmn), from Arabic ثُمْن (ṯumn, “one eighth”). Doublet of azumbre. (historical) A Spanish coin equivalent to one third of an adarme or one eighth of a castellano. As much as I can find at the moment. Hope this might aid your search further
Yep, that's all I came up with, too, but struck out on azumbre, adarme, and castellano when it came to looking for actual examples of such coins. But I did not travel too far down the rabbit hole.
This google book page references "tomin" in the following sentence: "The old Spanish coin was the peso, which was divisible into 8 reals, know in Mexican as tomin." I didn't search the rest of the book extensively, so it could contain other references. But so far that's the closest that I've found. I do see references to "tomines" later down the page, though. The book is called "Mexican and Central American Antiquities, Calendar Systems, and History" - more information on the link.
Thank you so much all of you. Thank you so much for this picture - awesome! if I may ask, where did you find it? also found this https://mapas.uoregon.edu/tribcoy/elements/tribcoya/10 but with no picture: "This detail represents four pesos and six tomines. The four coins that have a cross on them each have a value of one peso. The coin that bears the number four has a value of four tomines, or reales, which is half a peso. The peso was divided in eight reales or tomines. The final coin shown, with two small circles, was worth two tomines. The total is what the indigenous people owed in tributes to the Spaniards. [SW]" and the word "tomin", as already said by ewomack and expat, signifying a coin, gold weight, and standard of value equal to the real or eighth of a peso.
I live in Andalusia about 1 and a half hours away from Granada. I asked a coin collecting friend if he knew anything about Tomins, turned out he knew a little but not much but he did e-mail me that image. The Tomin monetary unit first appeared in "El Andaluz" around the 700's. Also he said it is believed they are from when the Spanish occupied Mexico and constructed the first mint there. But unfortunately there seems to be no facts to back this up. Although the base unit (Real) became the monetary unit recognised all over the "New World", including all it's derivative sub units including the Tomin
This is just fascinating! Granada, a beautiful city. Guess one could go metal-detecting in the surroundings, maybe to find a Tomin; that must be something And all of this came up because a dear friend, originally from Spain, does bird-watching and was telling me the story of the tominejos alias hummingbirds... serendipity
My Diccionario de la Real Academia Española defines a tomin as (1) one third of an adarme, weighing 0.596 grams, and (2) a silver coin used in certain parts of America, equivalent to 30 cents of a peseta. An adarme in its turn is defined as a weight (apparently not a coin) of 1.79 gms. Quite frankly, I have never heard of either. And for what it's worth, would also add that dictionary definitions of very rare items or coins are sometimes inaccurate...
For more information on tomines, you can consult my dictionary: https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tomin I am also the editor of the Mapas Project, cited above, but it has a new URL: https://mapas.wired-humanities.org/tribcoy/elements/tribcoya/10