By sheer coincidence, I received the thinnest Roman denarius and thinnest Islamic dirham I've bought to date in the mail on the same day. It's been interesting comparing how my thinnest and lightest denarius stacks up to the thinnest and lightest Islamic coin. I can't even begin to describe just how thin and lightweight my Julia Maesa denarius is compared to all my other denarii in the 3.0g+ range. Had I not acquired it from a reliable source, or known just how light Severan denarii can get, I would have thought it fake. But even more shocking is the thinnest of my Abbasid dirham. Holly cow, it almost feels razor thin. Just look at that. Of course, the Julia Maesa is 2.1g, and the Abbasid dirham is a mighty 2.6g in comparison, but when you stretch 2.6g to 24mm+, something has to give somewhere to make it that large with so little silver. The Abbasid dirham makes my earlier Umayyad dirham look big and beefy in comparison. And that's no surprise considering the Umayyads held on to Spain and the Spanish silver mines after being overthrown by the Abbasids, which means the Abbasids had to fund their many universities, scholars, scientists, and armies without the vast silver reserves of Spain...so naturally the coinage had to get smaller and thinner. Look at the ghosting on the obverse! See the three lines from the script on the other side? And look at the even more noticeable ghosting on the reverse: It sort of reminds me of the ghosting from the crosses on medieval English pennies. In fact, I would say the thickness between this coin and an English penny is comparable. Meanwhile, the Julia Mesa definitely doesn't suffer that fate, despite being lighter, due to being much smaller and thicker.
I've been reading Peter Spufford's Money and its use in Medieval Europe, and he commented on how the coins became increasingly thinner but larger in the East because of Islamic iconoclasm, and the desire to fit more inscriptions on the coin. The thinness in turn would be copied by Western Europe (through Spain into France I believe) during Carolingian rule. Hence the thinness of medieval coins - yet it's all still based off the Roman Denari - Dirham - Denier. Very cool you have some examples showing this shift! Edited for typos/blasted auto-correct
Would take your Maesa's weight over my 1.97g Antioch Maesa, don't have a pic of the edge and too lazy to take one but it's thinner than yours. Yours looks fine thinness wize.
Yeah, my Kavad I is also almost razor thin. These Sassanian and Islamic coins would have made excellent razor blades with a little bit of edge sharpening. Gillette got beaten to the invention of the disposable razor blade by the ancient and medieval middle eastern coin makers.
There comes a point in too, too thin when the reverse and obverse fight for what little silver is provided. Detail in the Halle hand/cross suffers. Making the reverse incuse of the gateway cross obverse solves the problem for the Hamburg but there is very little detail on this one.
Here's one I sold earlier in the year, one die only, as the coin Doug posted immediately above. These were struck against a piece of leather, and I measured this one at about 1/2mm thick. But they are surprisingly sturdy, with normal, gentle handling. They don't at all feel as flimsy as they look.
As far as thinness on Islamic coins goes, i think this will be a good contender: Rassulids (Jemen), 26 mm, 1.5 gr.
I think the Sassanians started the first large scale coinage of thin silver in the third century with those large fine portraits of Ardashir I (he also minted thicker drachms).
here is my thinnest coin, 16 mm and 0.4g. Bela III - Bela IV of Hungary, 1172-1270 AD, AR Bracteate Head right, reverse incuse of obverse. Unger 122. 16 mm, 0.4 g
