A small group of Byzantine Arab AE Folles from the 7th century AD

Isn't this bird just an eagle-tipped sceptre?

 

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Possibly. Although the bird seems to be above the T and not part of a scepter. Of course the extension might have been omitted.

Here's a follis of Tiberius with a clear eagle tipped scepter, found on the Internet, for comparison. I might have one that has not been photographed yet.

 

Fascinating coins. I am surprised that the Umayyads continued to mint essentially Byzantine style coins after their conquest of the Near Eastern provinces. I guess the public confidence in their administration would have suffered if they changed the monetary standards for the common folks, who most likely used bronze for day to day transactions.

 

Today I photographed the third Nysa - Scythopolis follis that I have. This coin came out of a Roma auction a couple of years ago.

This coin shares very similar design characteristics with the first one that I posted, but with an uncertain Arabic script to the right of the M on the reverse.

11.06 grams

 

Yes, I think they were clearly in a situation, early on, where it was best to "do as the natives do" with their coinage. As with so much other imitative coinage, the main elements of the design were left more or less intact, but with various types of legends, some in Arabic and some in a very garbled manner.

 

In the first decades of Muslim rule in the Near East, Islam was the religion of the military but not of the civilians. When the cities surrendered to the Arab conquerors, all accepted to pay tribute and not convert to Islam. There was no common islamic law yet (it will be instated under the Abbassids), cities still followed Roman law. These Arab-Byz bronze fulus are not only Byzantine style, they are Christian money with conspicuous crosses, mainly minted for civilian use. Islamisation of coinage began when the Byzantine started to mint gold with Jesus' portrait: gold was for the military and the authorities and these people were Muslims, they could not accept this. So they started to mint coins in gold and in bronze with the caliph's representation, and to eliminate crosses from the types.

 

Also note that the Byzantines were influenced in later times by the Abbasid banning of graven images in art and on the coinage through the Iconoclast movement where icons, which had been revered in Byzantium, were banned...that is until the Iconodules took control again and re-instituted them.

 

Thank you both for the information.

According to Wikipedia Caliph Abd al-Malik, in 695 AD, broke away from using Christian symbols on his coins when Justinian II minted gold coins with Christ's portrait on them.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"The rise of Islam in the seventh century had also caused some consideration of the use of holy images. Early Islamic belief stressed the impropriety of iconic representation. Earlier scholarship tried to link Byzantine Iconoclasm directly to Islam by arguing that Byzantine emperors saw the success of the early Caliphate and decided that Byzantine use of images (as opposed to Islamic aniconism) had angered God. This does not seem entirely plausible however. The use of images had probably been increasing in the years leading up to the outbreak of iconoclasm.[8] One notable change came in 695, when Justinian II put a full-faced image of Christ on the obverse of his gold coins. The effect on iconoclast opinion is unknown, but the change certainly caused Caliph Abd al-Malik to break permanently with his previous adoption of Byzantine coin types to start a purely Islamic coinage with lettering only.[9] This appears more like two opposed camps asserting their positions (pro and anti images) than one empire seeking to imitate the other. More striking is the fact that Islamic iconoclasm rejected any depictions of living people or animals, not only religious images. By contrast, Byzantine iconomachy concerned itself only with the question of the holy presence (or lack thereof) of images. Thus, although the rise of Islam may have created an environment in which images were at the forefront of intellectual question and debate, Islamic iconoclasm does not seem to have had a direct causal role in the development of the Byzantine image debate, in fact Muslim territories became havens for iconophile refugees.[10] However, it has been argued that Leo III, because of his Syrian background, could have been influenced by Islamic beliefs and practises, which could have inspired his first removal of images.[11]"
(Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Here's the link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Iconoclasm

This is an AE fals, Amman, of Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, AH 73-78 (693-697).

All Christian symbols at this point have been removed. The reverse, which would normally have a cross at the top of the steps on a Byzantine coin, has been replaced with a crescent shape symbol or character.

2.7 grams

 

Thanks for the edification. I was mostly repeating what my Byzantine history professor Warren Treadgold had said back in the early 90's. I'm sure scholarship has advanced since then.

 

Early Islamic belief, really?
Most of our sources on Muhammad and the beginning of Islam are of Abbassid date, and may reflect the beliefs of this time more than what Islam or "Ismaelism" (as John of Damascus called it) actually was under the first caliphs and the first Umayyads.
You can notice that in the 6th and 7th c. the art of statues and figurative reliefs had disappeared in the Christian Byzantine Empire. Byzantine art abandoned sculpture or any kind of 3D art and concentrated only on 2D art : frescoes, icons, mosaics. In Syria the art of making statues or high reliefs of human beings disappeared in the 5th c. But it was reintroduced... by the Muslims ! There are stone statues of naked women from Qasr al-Mushatta in Jordan, stucco high reliefs of the caliph and women in Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi in Syria, the same stucco high reliefs in Khirbat al-Mafjar in the Palestinian territories, and even a monumental statue probably of the caliph. Umayyad art did not forget painting and low relief, as can be seen at Qusayr Amra in Jordan or the bronze brasero (with bronze statuettes of nude women) found in al-Fudayn, Jordan.
Not very "Islamic" indeed, at least not in conformity with the later Islam of the Abbassids... Even the Quran was probably not what it is now and has been since the Abbassids. We have a review of the Quran by John of Damascus (On Heresies) written under the Umayyads (he died c. 749): he sums up some surahs of the Quran (he calls them "books"), including a so-called "book of the Camel of God" that is not found in the present recension of the Quran.
John of Damascus enumerates all the differences between Christian and Muslim dogmas, but he says nothing about images, though this topic was of great importance for him (he is the author of an Apologia against those who decry holy images).
I am convinced that the Islam of the Umayyads was not the same as the Islam of the Abbassids, which is the source of today's Islams.

 

It was an Umayyad, 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, 685-705, who introduced the iconoclastic Islamic reform coinage. The coin below is a dinar dated AH 77 (AD 696), believed to be the initial year of the reform. This particular piece sold for $190,000 (+ buyer's fee) a couple of years ago.


Image courtesy CNG.
.

 

I agree with a lot of what you've said. There is much that is unknown about religions and much that has been left to us humans to interpret.....I say try being good human being before being a good Muslim, Christian or Jew etc.

We all go to the same end using different paths. Unfortunately, today we talk about differences but seldom talk about the similarities. In my list of 10 coins purchased during 2020, I had my Arab Byzantine fals as number 1, in spite of it being the cheapest because it imitated the Byzantine currency, it's much more established, accepted and respected 'cousin'.

I had been looking for an early Islamic coin and was lucky enough to acquire this one. The similarity is startling with the cross clearly visible between all three figures. The differences we see today arose much later and were IMHO purely political in nature. Photos and description are courtesy of the auctioneer:

 

Here's another unusual Byzantine Arab fals that I came upon last month.

This coin has spent some time in distilled water, since it appears to have bronze disease. Now, after a few days, I am not sure if the problem was BD or just some light green deposits. Either way most have been removed. I'm keeping the coin under observation for any reoccurrence of BD.

This is the coin before cleaning:




Here it is after the bath:

Arab Byzantine AE fals, standing caliph, falcon left.
4.19 grams



Is this another fals from Damascus, 7th century AD?

Thanks!

 

On the reverse exergue you read DMShQ (Dimashq, Damascus). In the right field you can read TYB (tayyib, good), like on the Homs fulus. I cannot decipher what is in the left field. This fals is certainly from Damascus.

 

The Arabic inscription is ضرب دمشق جايز (zarb Dimashq ja'iz) "was srtuck [at] Damascus, lawful".

 

Thank you for the help identifying this fals!

 

Zarb of course !!! You're right !