Arab-Byzantine Coinage

Arab-Byzantine coinage is the term numismatists use for the coins struck in the former Byzantine provinces of Syria, Palestine and Egypt after the Arab conquests of the 630s and 640s, up to the Umayyad coinage reform of 696–697. The coins began as close copies of Byzantine issues and gradually took on Arabic inscriptions and Islamic themes, ending with the purely written designs that defined Islamic coinage for centuries.

The series is a key source for the early history of the caliphate, because it shows a new state adopting, adapting and finally replacing the currency of the empire it had partly displaced.

When Arab armies took Damascus, Jerusalem and Alexandria, they inherited regions that used the Byzantine monetary system: the gold solidus (also known as the nomisma) for large payments and taxes, and copper folles for daily trade. In the former Persian lands to the east, the silver Sasanian drachm continued under Arab rule as the "Arab-Sasanian" series. The new rulers at first had no reason to disrupt systems that worked, and existing Byzantine gold continued to circulate.

Most Arab-Byzantine coins are copper. The earliest are imitations of folles of the emperors Heraclius and Constans II, often crudely made, sometimes with jumbled or meaningless Greek lettering. Over time local mints produced more organised issues showing a Byzantine-style emperor figure together with the name of the mint, written in Greek and later also in Arabic. Mint cities included Damascus, Hims (ancient Emesa), Tiberias, Baalbek and Scythopolis, an old city of the Decapolis. Short Arabic phrases such as religious formulas began to appear beside the Greek, showing the growing confidence of the new authorities.

Gold was handled more cautiously. Some gold pieces modelled on the solidus were struck with Christian symbols altered, for example by replacing the cross on steps with a plain pole or similar device. The weight and look of these coins stayed close to the Byzantine standard so that they would be accepted in trade.

Under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (reigned 685–705), a distinctly Islamic image appeared. The so-called "standing caliph" coins show a bearded figure in Arab dress, generally interpreted as the caliph, holding a sword. They were issued in gold and copper in Syria in the early 690s, with gold dinars dated to the years AH 74–77 (about 693–697). These coins were the first to present an Arab ruler in his own right, and they formed a short but important bridge between Byzantine-style and fully Islamic coinage.

In AH 77 (696–697) Abd al-Malik introduced a new gold dinar with no images at all, carrying only Arabic religious inscriptions and the date. Its weight was based on the Arabian mithqal, a little lighter than the Byzantine solidus. A matching reform of the silver dirham followed shortly afterwards, and copper coins in the new epigraphic style replaced the old imitative types. The reformed gold coin is described on the Umayyad dinar page, the silver line continued in the Abbasid dirham, and the copper became the fals.

The reform created a two-metal system of gold and silver in fixed relation, a form of bimetallism, and gave the caliphate a money of its own that would circulate from Spain to Central Asia.

Arab-Byzantine coins are prized by historians and collectors because they document a moment of transition: a new power using familiar coins to keep trade and tax collection running, then reshaping them to express its own identity. The later Byzantine gold coin, known in the West as the bezant, and the Islamic dinar went on to compete as the leading gold currencies of the medieval Mediterranean.

• Umayyad dynasty – Encyclopaedia Britannica
• The British Museum
• American Numismatic Society