Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.

Anonymous Aniconic Dinar

Not on view

The Byzantine Empire issued the gold solidus, or nomisma, used primarily for large transactions such as tax payments, and several denominations of copper coins, the money of daily business transactions. Mints in Antioch and Alexandria supplied the majority of the coinage circulated in the southern provinces. The newly established Arab government inherited an efficient monetary system and made few changes during its first decades. The caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) introduced several issues of distinctively Islamic coinage.
In 696/97 ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) began issuing a series of coins bearing only religious inscriptions in Arabic. Such epigraphic coins are one of the many reforms introduced during his caliphate that laid the foundations for the imagery of the Islamic state.
The design of ‘Abd al-Malik’s gold and silver coins—several lines of horizontal inscription enclosed by a circular marginal inscription—became the standard for precious-metal coinage for centuries. This example combines the shahada with two verses from the Qur’an.

Anonymous Aniconic Dinar, Gold

This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.