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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Pellinore, post: 2966398, member: 74834&quot;]Well, I think I can help you with the first coin, your Abbasid dinar. You can find the data you need on the obverse of your coin, which is your second picture. In the centre is the Kalima, no information there. It&#039;s all in the obverse margin. I cropped your coin with Irfanview:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]727046[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Think of the circle as a clock and start at the little marginal circlet of 1 o&#039;clock. Arabic is written from right to left.</p><p>The first part is always the same, until about 8 o&#039;clock: <i>&#039;Bismillah zuriba haza ed-dirhem bi&#039;</i> = <i>&#039;In the name of God this dirham was struck in&#039;</i> Then comes the name of the mint. You will need a list of the usual mints, and you may find it in Richard Plant, <i>An Introduction to Arabic Coins and How to Read Them</i>, a cheap book (many identical reprints) that you can buy new, secondhand (good website: used.addall.com) or as an ebook.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is a long mintname ending with a large X (just after 6 o&#039;clock) followed by a circlet. That X is <i>&#039;al&#039;</i> and the circlet is <i>&#039;m&#039;</i>. Of the mint names in Plant (page 38-39) the only one that ends like that is Medinat el-Salam, meaning <i>Gate of Peace</i> and designing Baghdad.</p><p>After that comes a word starting with three short upright lines, a sure sign of an s. The word is <i>&#039;sanat&#039;</i> meaning &#039;in the year&#039;. Arabic years are organized from ones through tens to hundreds.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is the chart I&#039;m using for reading Arabic years. I found it on a useful Russian website, rasmircoins.ucoz.ru. But it&#039;s an adaption of page 34 in the abovementioned book by Richard Plant, to which is added a detail of the year of an Abbasid example coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]727059[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The first number is eight, then a little comma meaning &#039;and&#039;, then eighty, another &#039;and&#039; and hundred - a very loooong drawn out hundred as was the style of the period. So your coin was struck in Baghdad, 188.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m using this website as a useful Anno Domini - Hijra converter: <a href="http://info.charm.ru/library/AHxAD%20Converter.doc" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://info.charm.ru/library/AHxAD%20Converter.doc" rel="nofollow">info.charm.ru/library/AHxAD%20Converter.doc</a></p><p>188 AH = 804 AD. Ergo, your coin was issued by the famous caliph Harun ar-Rashid.</p><p><br /></p><p>Paul[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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