Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the 'Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (original) (raw)
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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2023
The present note offers a new, and hopefully more nuanced, reading for a cryptic marginal legend on an issue of the Umayyad-era rebel ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ashʿath (d. ca. 85 AH/704 CE). Comparing this legend with several marginal legends of like character, and contextualising the formulae within contemporary religious idiom as expressed in late ancient Arabic-Islamic epigraphy, it is argued that all these legends contain proper nouns invariably belonging to the issuing authority, in conjunction with invocations addressed to God, in an attempt to establish a hierarchic relationship between the two. Drawing on literary sources, it has then been demonstrated that the legend of the Ibn al-Ashʿath issue does indeed mention the name of an individual, the local governor, Kharasha ibn Masʿūd ibn Wathīma, a new name in the repertoire of governors known through Arab-Sasanian coinage. Based on these results, a case for further reliance on literary, epigraphic, papyrological, and other forms of evidence in the study of numismatics has been made. A new chronology, based on numismatic evidence, for Ibn al-Ashʿath's rebellion has also been proposed.
2016
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Was Thatta the last refuge of Din-i-Illahi? A Numismatic Perspective
Akbar established the Illahi Era as a part of his eclectic religious order, Din-e-Illahi at the beginning of the thirtieth year of his reign in 1584 based on a Solar Calendar complete with Persian months as a marker of his reign. The Illahi era was also adopted on his coins with the date depicted on Month and the Year of the Illahi calendar. The same system was continued in the reign of his son and successor Jahangir (c.1605-1627) without much compunction or religious scruples. However, Jahangir’s successor, Shah Jahan pushed for a more ardent religious course and banned the use of the Illahi Era substituting it with the Islamic Lunar Calendar beginning with the Prophet’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D. The Hijri Era was adopted to placate the orthodox Ulema who denounced the use of the Solar Calendars as unIslamic and thus the coins of Shah Jahan’s reign were also dated in Hijri Era. However, Shah Jahan’s reign also saw the survival of the use of the Illahi Era ‘in one or two outlying places, though the practical use of a calendar of solar months led to their continued use (but not invariably) for fiscal purposes.’ This Paper has attempted to study the coins of Shah Jahan in respect to the existence of Illahi dates and months on the coins of various mints of which Thatta seems to stand out with the maximum number of extant samples and also a wide range of dates stretching beyond the cutoff year of Regnal Year 7 in case of other mints. The Paper looks at the probable reasons for the survival of this anomalous situation of Shah Jahan’s coinage from this important mint and tries to connect the dots to Akbar’s reign itself.
This paper re-examines the reign of Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn (254–270/868-883), taking account of the currently available numismatic evidence. It argues for a reappraisal of the crucial triangular relationship between Ibn Ṭūlūn, the caliph al-Muʿtamid ʿalā Allāh (256–279/869-892) and the latter’s brother Abū Aḥmad (known as al-Muwaffaq billāh from 261/874). The rise of the Tulunids is situated within the context of the weakening of the Abbasid unitary state in the middle of the third century AH/ninth century CE, and the emergence of powerful provincial governors whose rise to power anticipated the eclipse of the caliphal state in the fourth/tenth century. The value of the numismatic evidence lies mainly in the names and titles that occur on the coins. These allow the historian to control the sometimes contradictory narrative of the textual sources and also raise questions about the nature and extent of Tulunid autonomy.