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Zacour, N. P.; Hazard, H. W. (ed.) / Volume VI: The impact of the Crusades on Europe
(1989)
XI: Crusader coinage with Arabic inscriptions, pp. 421-473
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Page 421
421XI CRUSADER COINAGE WITH ARABIC INSCRIPTIONS A. The Islamic Context1 CURRENCY IN THE MOSLEM WORLD n the Islamic lands, the crusaders encountered monetary systems quite different from the one they knew in Latin Europe, where the only coins until the thirteenth century were small, often debased, silver deniers (pennies). The Moslems, in contrast, used gold dinars, silver dirhams, and copper fulus (fals in the singular). Not every part of the Islamic world had coins in all three metals at the same time. Systems varied from place to place, even within the realms of dynasties such as the Fatimids, AiyUbids, and Mamluks, and evolved during the two centuries the crusaders were in Syria. Some features, nevertheless, were general among the Moslems whom the crusaders met. In the Moslem lands, as elsewhere in pre-modern For the coinage of the major Islamic dynasties in contact with the crusaders, see, for the Fãiimids, George C. Miles, Fatimid Coins in the Collections of the University Museum, Philadelphia, and the American Numismatic Society (ANS, Numismatic Notes and Monographs, no. 121; New York, 1951), a catalogue of one major collection only but with references to all previous work; for the AiyUbids, Paul Balog, The Coinage of the Ayyubids (Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication, no. 12; London, 1980); for the Mamluks, idem, The Coinage of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria (ANS, Numismatic Studies, no. 12 [New York, 1964]). Both these latter are corpuses, including all coins known at the time of publication. The standard reference for all the Arabic coins of the crusaders is Paul Balog and Jacques Yvon, "Monnaies a légendes arabes de l'Orient latin," Rev. numis., 6th ser., 1(1958), 133—168; the abbreviation BY used frequently below indicates the variety numbers established by them. The most recent general classification of the crusader gold varieties is Adon A. Gordus and D. M. Metcalf, "Neutron Activation Analysis of the Gold Coinages of the Crusader States" (similarly, GM), in Metallurgy in Numismatics, ed. Metcalf and W. A. Oddy, I (London, 1980), 119-150, summarized with some additional refinements by Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades and the Latin East in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (London, 1983), pp. 9-14, 42-44. For the crusader Arabic dirhams, the standard survey is Michael L. Bates, "Thirteenth Century Crusader Imitations of Ayyubid Silver Coinage: a Preliminary Survey," in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Dickran K. Kouymjian (Beirut, 1974), pp. 393-409. 1. This section is by Bates.
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