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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3299576, member: 93416&quot;]Thanks again Ed – its a delight to correspond with you.</p><p><br /></p><p>To be honest I had in mind the Islamic texts that try to explain the political history of Islamic coins and weights. Most of that stuff comes from Baladhuri and Tabari, and the problem is - they are writing around 850 AD. So its a bit like trusting Shakespeare about Richard III.</p><p><br /></p><p>I had not thought of going to the Koran. If I wanted to play hard ball I would point you to a book on the Koran by Noldeke (see Google books) and make two points. First that we do not even know that Muhammed could read or write, and second, that people spent 400 years after Muhammed arguing about which version of the Koran was correct. But actually, I think you make a very strong point. There does not seem to be any written version of the Koran that does not use the word “dirhem” – and yes - that points pretty strongly to it being some sort of pre-existing Arabic dialect version of “drachm”</p><p><br /></p><p>We agree on that ‘Antara poem two. I could not find a date fro the earliest written version but I suspect it is late. Trusting that might be like trusting Geoffrey of Monmouth about Merlin?</p><p><br /></p><p>A more important point is – what do key sources mean when they write “dirhem”? I have in mind the great scientist Alberuni writing about 1030 AD. He clearly uses the term as indicating his own very exact standard – but I do not know what it was. The problem I face is that only one of his books has ever been translated – and that was his “India” way back in 1888. He wrote a bunch of scientific books on other topics – but none of them have been translated.</p><p><br /></p><p>We surely have way more professional people today working on Islamic history than there were back in 1888. But hardly anyone takes a serious interest in this topic any more – and the work of translating major texts has near stopped altogether. Strange.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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