During the lifetime of Muhammad, the followers of Islam took control of the entire Arabian peninsula. Under the four Orthodox Caliphs (632-661 AD), their territory was extended westward to Tripoli, half way along the northern coast of Africa, and eastward as far as Balkh in Afghanistan. Under the Umayyad dynasty (661-750 AD), this territory was extended further west to the Atlantic Ocean and into Spain. In the east, the borders were pushed beyond the Indus river into India and well east of Kabul and Samarqand, deep into Central Asia. Under the Abbasid dynasty (749-1258 AD), this territory was held intact (with the exception of Spain) for about 50 years, then suffered fragmentation, as will be described in a later section.

The earliest Arab coins imitated those of the Persians (the Sassanians) and the Byzantines. The Arab-Sassanian series goes back as far as 31 AH, just 21 years after the death of Muhammad. Only one coin of this series (dated 69 AH) is shown here, but others are presented at this site, and some of the precursor Persian coins can be found at this site. The Sassanian type was resumed a century later by the Arab governors of the province of Tabaristan (on the southern border of the Caspian Sea). The Arab-Byzantine coins imitated the copper 40-nummia pieces of the 7th-century Byzantine Emperors.

The Arab coinage was reformed in 77-79 AH (696-98 AD), creating the main Umayyad series. Its copper denomination, the fals, exhibited a wide variety of types, but the silver coin, the dirham, used a single caligraphic type at all of the mints of the Caliphate. This coin, with its religious inscriptions and its consistent use of a date and a mintname, set a pattern that was followed for the next few centuries throughout the Islamic world.

The Abbasid series is similar to the Umayyad, but the script takes on a distinctive form that exaggerates the horizontal letters and makes the others microscopic. The Caliph's name is absent on the early issues (as on the Umayyad dirhams), but it appears on some coins of al-Mahdi (775-85 AD) and becomes a standard feature on all later issues. During the early 900's AD, the Abbasid Caliphs came under the power of the Buwayhid rulers and lost their temporal authority. Their coins came to an end, but their names were often placed on the coinage of other rulers, citing them as Islam's spiritual head. In a later age, the Abbasid Caliphs regained control of a temporal state, but those coins are of a much different style and will be mentioned later. Some non-Abbasid coins can be deceptive when they include the Caliph's name but happen to omit the name of the temporal ruler. One such coin is included here.

TO SUMMARIZE...


Persian and Byzantine types.

Arab-Sassanians
Tabaristan
Arab-Byzantine

Standard issues.

Umayyad Caliphate
Abbasid Caliphate

From a later period.

Abbasid Caliphate (Restored)