Thanks to @dougsmit 's post on representative coinage, i decided to look on vcoins today after failing miserably to find a coin for Granada for the last 3 months, and managed to snag one to complete my representative series on Islamic coinage of Iberia. This is by no means an extensive and comprehensive catalog of Islamic coinage of Iberia, but rather a fair and simple representative illustration of the many phases of Islamic occupation of Iberia. #1: Umayyads come in and conquer and rule Iberia for the greater part of 40 years before the dynasty collapses. It is after the Iberia conquest (when they gain access to the Spanish silver mines) that they start to mint silver dirhams...and in great abundance compared to the more limited silver coinage from before. #2: Umayyad Caliphate collapses and the Umayyads retreat to Spain, while the Abbasid keep the rest of the Islamic world under their control. From Spain the Umayyads rule a culturally and artistically rich kingdom (albeit much diminished in power.) That is represented by this dirham of the Caliphate of Cordoba. #3: Umayyad power in Iberia collapses around 1020 CE and chaos ensues as warring taifas fight each other and suffer setbacks against the Christians. The Almohad Caliphate take the opportunity to invade Iberia and conquer the warring taifas, and create a buffer against the advancing Christian kings. This is represented by this Almohad dirham. #4: After many setbacks at the hands of the Christians, the Muslims of Iberia grow dissatisfied with Almohad rule and in 1232 revolt and found the Emirate of Granada as a tributary kingdom under the Christian kings. This is the last great Islamic kingdom in Iberia, which collapses in 1492 thus ending 700 years of Islamic presence in Iberia. This period of the Emirate of Cordoba is represented by this 1/4 dirham of Granada.
Nice, succinct display of coins and write-up. I like it! Nice captures... looks fun. Inspires me to do a similar write-up for Pre-denarii Italia and Romano issues and coinage overview through to the end of the Republic... LOL, but not today.
I agree with the above posts!! Doug posted several Byzantine coins for reasons of interest, importance and variety as well as affordability. I'm not sure I have quite enough coins of any type to be representational....and if I do they are of the late Republic which I'll postpone until Brian or Bing present theirs LOL
I should add that the last coin, the 1/4 dirham, is only 10mm and weights something like 0.6g, so it should be paper thin. Probably almost tied for smallest coin with my Kyzikos obol. Impressive that they could get all that Islamic text in such a tiny coin. Now I need to work on a fair representative example of Iberian medieval Christian kingdoms. I have one so far for Castille, so it's going to be a work in progress.
