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A glass dīnār weight in the name of 'Abd al-'Azīz b. Marwān
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
In cataloguing the British Museum's collection of early Islamic glass stamps the writer was faced with a small disk with a brief inscription, a type of which two other specimens had already been published. The weights of these pieces, which lack any explicit indication of their purpose, showed that they belonged to the category of dīnār weights. The inscription that did exist had been variously interpreted, but not as containing a personal name. For reasons that are given below, the writer came to the conclusion that the word ‘abdallāh in the legend was a name, that it could only refer to the son of the Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwān and that the weights were produced in Egypt in ‘Abdallāh's name during the period when he was Governor there (A.H. 86–90/A.D. 705–9). ‘Abdallāh's dīnārnar weights thus became the earliest known coin weights in the great corpus of glass metrological stamps issued in Umayyad and early ‘Abbāsid Egypt, preceding those of the next Governor, Qurra b. Sharīk, which had long maintained their place at the beginning of the coin weight series. The British Museum's piece could therefore be given pride of place in the catalogue as No. 1.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 1986 , pp. 177 - 182
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1986
References
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2 Stephen Album, List No. 35 (Santa Rosa, April 1984), Nos. 242–3.
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14 In the study of glass stamps the importance of the separation of the offices was first recognized by Casanova.
15 Kindi, 58–63.
16 For an extra and a missing ‘tooth’ see, for instance, Morton, op. cit., Nos. 65–6 of ’Ubaydallāh b. al-Habhāb.
17 Kindi, 47–8.
18 Mīzān is normally spent without alif on early weights, as here, though the full spelling is sometimes found.
19 Recent bibliographies of the subject are given in the works of Balog and Morton referred to above. The main bodies of material are those published by Casanova, S. Lane–Poole, Petrie, Miles, Launois, ‘Abd al–Rahmān Fahmī Muhammad, Balog and Sāmih ‘Abd al-Rahman Fahmi.
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26 Corpus Papyrorum Raineri, III, Series Arabica, ed. Adolphus, Grohmann, Band i, Teil 2, Protokolle (Vienna, 1924), 3–65. In many cases the individual protocols are only partly preserved or legible. Restorations, the expansion of contractions and minor differences of spelling are ignored below. The forms quoted are adequately attested and can easily be found in the sections on the relevant Governors.Google Scholar
27 Wellhausen, J., The Arab kingdom and its fall, tr. Weir, M. G. (Calcutta, 1927), 137–8.Google Scholar
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29 Gustave, Schlumberger, ‘Poids de verre etalons monetiformes d'origine byzantine’, Mùlanges d'archùologie byzantine, Premiùre sùrie (Paris, 1895), 317, 321–2.Google Scholar