Inscriptions played a major role in the development and expression of kingship in the ancient Iranian world and this tradition continued throughout the Islamic period. Alongside the proclamation of the ruler's name in the Friday prayer, the issuance of epigraphic coinage has traditionally been the standard marker of a ruler's legitimacy. The aim of this chapter is to go beyond these two elements and examine the links between the form and specific textual content of the micro and mobile coinage, and that seen in the immobile and monumental architectural inscriptions across the dār al-Islām, from the fifth/eleventh to the seventh/thirteenth centuries.

This phenomenon can be seen in several different dynastic contexts, from the Umayyads onwards, and from the Maghrib to Turan. While horizontal bands of inscriptions are the most common format of presenting text monumentally, the three case studies discussed below look at specific examples of the use of circular forms, allowing for comparative analysis between textually and aesthetically related architectural and numismatic case studies produced within the same cultural milieux. They address primarily textual roundels, but the final section expands the discussion to include some examples of similarly formatted anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images. The case studies deliberately span a large area, from Central Asia to Anatolia and Egypt. The reason for such a vast scope is to highlight the general commonalties that transcend not just different regions and styles, but also different aspects of Islamic belief and rulership.

The specificity of both form and content, but vast differences in not only scale and media but, significantly, mobility, are what strikes at the heart of the argument. In order to approach the subject from each end of the scale this chapter addresses a variety of media, namely stone and stucco on buildings and gold and silver coins. The aim in all cases is to attempt to highlight the close relationship between micro and macro examples of dynastic identity and the projection of power and legitimacy.

The first section consists of a study of some of the roundel inscriptions in the Shah Fazl tomb, a Qarakhanid monument built in the fifth/eleventh century in the far northeast of the Fergana Valley in what is now Kyrgyzstan, and how they can be related to inscriptional composition of Qarakhanid coinage.