Numismatica Bizantina Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Corrected 12/1/2015. Coins of period see: http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/gov_trans_types.htm
The transitional coinage, exclusively in Latin, was struck during three years 93-95H, practically a year after the very beginning of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The first coins known are dated in 93H coinciding with the belated arrival of governor Musa ibn Nusair and the Arab djund, which according to some sources occurred a full year after the beginning of Tarik ibn Ziyad's raid, a long time lapse that would seem to indicate that Musa was completely unprepared for the turn of events and had evidently not give the order for the conquest. This possibility is further confirmed by his very violent beating and near execution of his runaway mawla when he finally did catch up with him all the way up near Talavera, north-west of Toledo the abandoned Visigoth capital. It could be seen as if Tarik's large booty raid, using mainly a few thousand auxiliary Berber infantry troops, was, after the unexpected death in battle of Rodrigo, the Visigoth king, opportunistically improvised on the spur of the moment into an accidental conquest. If so the Umayyad rulers of Damascus would have been even more surprised than Musa by this turn of events, especially in view of the very tenuous hold that was had, at that point in time, over the Maghreb al Aqsa, probably only limited, as the chronicles and the numismatic evidence seems to indicate, to vulnerable military cantonments in Tlimsan and far away Tangiers ( For rare fals of these two locations see copper coins in http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/gov_ifriquiya_coinage.htm , in the Greater Syria area many of the fals mints seem to coincide with djund settlements which may indicate a direct relation of these early copper coins with the intendancy of the military).
These exceptional transitional coins contain on the margin of the obverse the first part of the shahada in abbreviated Latin, mainly the consonants of the phrase are used, the Kalima or the first part of the Shahada is in the form, IN Nomine DoNiNi= bismi Allah, Non DeuS NiSi Deus= la ilaha ila Allah, SoLuS NoSTer= wahdahu. While on the margins of the reverse is the mint in the abbreviation SPN for Hispania followed by the year of hidjra in roman numerals (ex. 93H = XCIII). On the center of the same area is the indiction dating ( Indiction is the 15 year time lapses which the Romans/Byzantines used mainly for fiscal purposes). Very much in contrast with the transitional coins struck in Ifriquiya = AFRC from 84-95H., the above mentioned coins seem to have been struck on no fixed metallic content. A very few are of seemingly good gold while others in a wide range of electrons. The general low gold content of these coins might be directly related not so much to jewelry and votive objects taken as booty but more likely to the very low gold register of the Visigoth coinage circulating at this late period. The dies of the indiction coins are extremely varied and in most cases very crudely done. It is surprising that after seeing a couple hundred of these coins that no two coins from exactly the same pair of dies appear to have been registered. This would indicate a lack of centralized control and a mint, or mints, itinerant with the various military contingents as these moved rapidly around the Iberian Peninsula at that turbulent historic period. Probably these coins represent the metallic booty of the moment, mainly Visigoth coins and objects of metallic value, that is gold & silver, taken either by war act “ghanima” or extracted by peace pact “sulh”, and which was all being rapidly monetized in situ for its quick redistribution among the military participants. It was probably done deliberately in the coinage types that the djund of Ifriquiya had been for more than a decade familiar with. The very early dating in 93H of these coins is indicative of this intentionality, as is Musa’s bringing along with his djund the necessary mint masters for implementing what seems to be a premeditated policy (1). This quickness in monetization was necessary as the djund had a violent tradition of not waiting very long for what it thought was its due share of booty. Some of the lead seals of the period seem to clearly be indicative of this rapid redistribution in situ (see 711 article in: www.academia.edu/2324901 'The new evidence of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania..’, and also its ‘Actualization’ in www.academia.edu/5751302/ . Also indicative of the administrative turmoil of the moment would be the period falsification of these very same coins: www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/gov_period_falsifications.htm ).

The next transition in the coinage comes with the important bilingual coinage of the year 98H/ 716, which coincides with the year when the capital of al-Andalus was transferred from Seville to Cordoba by Al-Hurr. Before the recent appearance of the lead seals of the period of the Umayyad conquest (see fig.3 & p.149-150 in above referred article) these coins were considered to be the first extant material document for the use of the Arabic script in the Iberia Peninsula and the first evidence of the appearance of the still enigmatic term “al-Andalus ", a word whose etymology to date, in spite of various interesting theories, still very much eludes us: it could suggest a homophonic, but improbable,” Vandalia" as suggested, by R. Dozy a century and more ago, or the mythical "Atlantida" as J. Valve not very convincingly tried to argue, or as has more recently been very interestingly argued by H. Halm that it could be derived from the traditional "Gothic Sors" in the composed word "landahlauts" that is allotted or drawn land, which in its phonetic form "landalos" according to this author, became to the Arabic ear with the addition of the beginning article, al-Andalus. This is quite a heated debate that is not going to be settled any time soon, if ever. The search, in my opinion, should commence by trying to answer the basic question of: was the word "al-Andalus" brought in or picked up in Hispania by its new masters? The earliest transitional coinage may be suggesting the latter, for if the new masters of Hispania, as we have read above, had no qualms in translating from Arabic to Latin something so important as the kalima, that is the first part of the shahada, and imposing the hidjra dating in roman numerals, then why not an Arabic mint name, had they had one? They obviously did not have one. If as Roger Collins reasonably argues the ruling Visigoth elite must have kept part of their identitary oral 'Gothic' language to communicate among themselves, indirectly indicative of this, are the intentionally gothic names chosen by their kings, nobles of both sexes and others, which would to seem to indicate then that Halm's "Landalos" may well be on the correct track. This seemingly unnecessary addition by the conquerors of a new name place, al-Andalus, for an area which already had two known ones to them, Spania & Hesperidis, must have had at the moment, under the probable governorship of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz b. Musa, an important and clear political intent of early ‘independentism’ (see text on the slides 16-18 of ‘The Seals of the Umayyad Conquest…. https://www.academia.edu/5751302 for a possible explanation for the seemingly unnecessary addition of al-Andalus).
These bilingual coins, struck in relatively good gold, have something important in common with the indiction series, which is the star form that is always prominently in the center of the reverse of both. A fact that has bewildered many generations of numismatist.The solution we now think was found long ago (more than a century ago!) by Antonio Delgado in an until very recently unpublished work (see: https://www.academia.edu/2326452 pg.56) were he logically argues that this prominent star, smack center of the coins, is a “speaking image” for Hesperidis, the star of the west (Venus) which was in classical Greek period progressively applied to western geographical regions till it finally became applied to the Iberian Peninsula. It seems logical that the Arab conquerors moving first across many of the Greek speaking provinces of the Roman/Byzantine empire would have naturally picked up the name Hesperia as one of the names for the Iberian Peninsula and in their first coins put the symbol as synonymous to Hispania and quickly after that, in the bilingual coinage, as also synonymous to the new name place "al-Andalus". So singularly these coins contain three “names” for the same geographical area (2). T.I توفيق ابراهيم

1-The earlier choice of Musa ibn Nusair’s of striking coins in Ifriquiya in the regional Byzantine style, in Latin, when the ‘arabization’ of coinage had been implemented by ´Abd al-Malik more than a decade earlier in 77H could be taken as an early sign of an attempted distancing from the central authority in Damascus. It was not a matter of lacking mint masters with the adequate knowledge of Arabic script as he was striking dated copper coinage in Ifriquiya , fals, fully in Arabic from 91H onwards ( Walker P. 148).
2- One should take note that the bilingual coin has the peculiarity of having in Arabic only the second part of the accepted shahada, the risala محمد رسول الله and not the obligatory لا اله الا الله . Nor does the basmala appear at the beginning the Arabic mint and date legend as is usual. I certainly do not think too much should be made out of this omission which was probably dictated by the limited space and the fact that that the term الله was central to the meaning of the risala text and must have sufficed making this seeming omission acceptable. Curiously the use of محمد رسول الله was a late comer to Islamic coinage and was not first introduced by the Umayyads but by the rebel anti-caliph Ibn Zubair and became standard on coins only after that. But that obviously does not mean that it was not in oral or written use before that).