User:Baylily44/Gold dinar

Peer review comments from Carly: Your notes look super thorough and should make it easy to add to the article, which seems fairly short. Following the three phases makes it easy to understand, and it's a pretty intuitive way to break it up so that makes a lot of sense. The next step is fitting these into the page, either making these notes into full paragraphs or adding these details in where appropriate; it mostly seems like you'll be adding new sections to the existing page. Seems really helpful in the context of the article!

***Note to peer reviewer: This sandbox contains additions to the existing Wikipedia article: Gold dinar

Gold Dinar Wikipedia Project

Bay Fletcher

Professor Neumeier

10/25/20

Additions to the Article
The gold dinar (Arabic: ﺩﻳﻨﺎﺭ ذهبي‎) is an medieval Islamic gold coin. The weight of the dinar is 1 mithqal (4.25 grams).

The word dinar comes from the Latin word denarius, which was a silver coin. The name "dinar" is also used for Sasanid, Kushan, and Kidarite gold coins, though it is not known what the contemporary name was.

The first dinars were issued by the Umayyad Caliphate. Under the dynasties that followed the use of the dinar spread from Islamic Spain to Central Asia.

Background
After the Umayyad conquest of Byzantine territory in Syria and subsequently Iraq and Iran (circa mid-7th century), coinage was not standardized across the realm for close to 50 years. Historian and coinage expert Luke Treadwell posits that this lapse may have been because of differences in culture between the Umayyads and Byzantines- Umayyads did not present kingship in the same way as the Byzantines, and did not value displays of power such as crowns, luxurious courts, or reminting coins .

Gold Dinars in the Umayyad Empire
Though it is not a universally accepted system of classification, coinage expert Luke Treadwell separates medieval Islamic coin production into three phases; the Conservative, Adaptive, and Epigraphic.

Conservative Phase (650-691)
'''After conquering the Byzantines, the Umayyads adopted their decentralized coinage system. Coins differed from region to region, and were controlled by local officials rather than the caliphal state. Byzantine locals coins often depicted Christian symbols, and Sasanian coins would be inscribed with the name of the governor the coin was minted under (with very rare exceptions wherein the caliph's name would appear) . During this time, Muslim Caliph Mu'awaiya tried to introduce a centralized gold coin when he began his rule over the Byzantines. The coin depicted a set of stairs and an altered version of the original Byzantine cross. Because of its lack of Christian imagery, the coin was rejected by the Byzantines.'''

Adaptive Phase (691-696)
The civil war against the Umayyad caliphate led by Zubayrid people (685-692) inspired new caliph Abd al-Malik b. Marwan to establish the legitimacy of the Umayyads, seeing changes in architecture, an upsurge in the use of Arabic language, and, by the year 691 decides to standardize the coinage system. A scattering of patterned pieces in silver exist from this date, based on Sassanian prototypes but with distinctive Arabic reverses. This experiment, which maintained the Sassanian weight standard of 3.5–4.0 grams was not proceeded with, and in 698 CE (AH 79) a completely new type of silver coin was struck at 14 mints to a new nominal weight of 2.97 grams. Unlike the contemporary gold coinage, this figure does not seem to have been achieved in practice. The average weight of sixty undamaged specimens of 698-704 (AH 79–84) is only 2.71 grams, a figure very close to that for a unique coin of 698 (AH 79) struck with no mint name (as was the standard procedure for the gold dinars produced in Damascus). These new coins which bore the name of 'dirham', established the style of the Arab-Sassanian predecessors at 25 to 28 mm in diameter.

Coins from 691-693 often show the pre-established Byzantine depiction of a cross on the steps, but with the bar on the cross replaced with a small globe. The side normally taken as the obverse has as its central legend the Kalima or shahada (a Qur'anic inscription): "There is no god except Allah alone, there is no partner with Him." Around it is the mint and date formula reading "In the Name of Allah: this Dirham was struck in [mint name e.g. Damascus] the year [e.g. 692, AH 79]".

Circa 693-697, Syrian mints began to fall under the jurisdiction of the caliph, rather than local officials. This standardization saw the emergence of the iconic Standing Caliph figure - a male figure, assumed to either be Muhammed or Caliph Al-Malik, standing on a set of stairs, holding an object, often interpreted as a whip, and wearing a head-covering or wig (these two embellishments change from mint to mint). The obverse remained the modified Byzantine cross on steps with either a shahada or a short allegiance to the caliph. Closer towards the end of the 690s, a Sasanian Bust joins the standing caliph figure, marking the end to the Adaptive phase.

Epigraphic Phase (696-749)
Likely because of issues with fitting the Sasanian bust onto the coin with the standing caliph, or because the caliph was no longer an image that unified the members of the Umayyad empire, Standing Caliph coins were worked out of circulation . '''The new coins were much simpler, displaying only Qur'anic verses. These coins were used until the Umayyad empire fell to the Mongols in 749 AD. The visual language of simple coins with Quranic inscriptions was used by the Abbasid empire, 500 years after the Umayyads.'''