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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 8321148, member: 110504&quot;]And that&#039;s a terrific question.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, especially during the 12th and 13th centuries, Christians were imitating Muslim coins left and right.</p><p>For the opposite, the first instances that come to mind are the &#039;Arab-Byzantine&#039; coins of the earliest Caliphates (Rashidun and Umayyad), from the 7th-8th centuries CE, which, yep, imitate Byzantine bronze coins, and the incredible AEs of the Artuqids of Mardin, in Turkey, which very artistically imitate and adapt both Byzantine and Classical coins.&nbsp; --Other people here know A Lot more about both of these series than I do.</p><p>Regarding Christians imitating Muslim coins, that happens all along the southern, Mediterranean &#039;frontier&#039; of Christian Europe, from Iberia, to Norman Sicily, to the Crusader States.&nbsp; For these, along with the much earlier Aab-Byzantine series, a lot of the motivaton was sheer pragmatism; people imitated the coins of neighboring states, coreligionist or not, for the purposes of trade.&nbsp; ...The Normans, both in Sicily and Crusader Antioch, also imitated Byzantine coins, mainly for the same reason.&nbsp; ...Although some of the Norman Sicilian coins include both Byzantine and Islamic motifs and legends, along with legends in Latin, sometimes on the same coin.&nbsp; That&#039;s where you can suspect that some of the impulse might have been more purely esthetic, as with the Artuqids of Mardin.&nbsp; I can also imagine the Normans in Sicily, ruling substantial populations of both Muslims and Byzantines, may have been thinking in terms of propping up the demographic unity of their immediate neighborhood.</p><p>...And, By the Way, Welcome to the forum![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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