Loving the reverses of these early imitative Arab Byzantine coins. These are all 'vanilla' Constans II "ANA NEOS" copies . Crazy over these things.
And three more...very distinctive type with "bowling pin" strokes to the left of the 'M'. One researcher calls this issue the "Ugly Square Flan" type. From earlier coins hammered flat. There is a common nonsensical "mint mark" under the 'M's that is hard to see in the picture.
I acquired a whole lot of these with 25% being Arab/pseudo Byzantine. Anybody have a good book on these they can recommend? I have Goodwin and Foss but still have a handful I can't find. An example:
Wow. That's a striking pile of coins. A couple of them...I feel I almost know the die-cutter. I use the Foss book, but there seems to be a lot of research on these published on the web under the "academia" site.
I think this: https://www.academia.edu/ One can use a facebook or google login and download articles. Some are really specific arab-byzantine investigations by enthusiastic researchers.
The next step up from Goodwin and Foss is "Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean, Volume I, the Pre-Reform Coinage of the Early Islamic Period" by Steve Album and Tony Goodwin. It covers both Arab-Byzantine (#505-742) and Arab-Sasanian (#1-504). Keep in mind that there is little indication that the celators had much guidance as to what to produce. With dies created by hand, there is always the chance that the next die was somewhat different and your next coin will be, usually in some minor way, unlisted.
No wonder I never got it. They are $280 to $700 on amazon. Yikes....but the ANA has a copy . I know where I'm going this weekend! If anyone is interested I can post my findings
@MW.. Try to pick up among this collection those coins with Arabic lettering regarding the mint or the name of the city, such as Homs, Damascus or Tiberiad etc.. Researches are mostly based upon these findings.
