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.