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Monetary Liquidity & Political Propaganda: The Mint in Marv during the Second Islamic Civil War (62/681-73/692)
Abstract
In the year 69/689, a coin from the city of Marv was minted under the authority of a certain Salm b. Ziyād. This was quite the feat, however, as Salm was imprisoned in Mecca some 2000 miles away. Five years earlier, the Zubayrid governor, ‘Abdallāh b. Khāzim, deposed and replaced Salm as governor of the territory. Thus, why are coins still being minted in the name of a deposed Umayyad governor long after his tenure in the region? Islamic coins from the period of the Second Islamic Civil War (62/681-73/692) have drawn a great deal of scholarly attention, especially concerning the changing of the coins’ appearance from Greek Byzantine and Middle Persian Sassanian imitations to aniconic epigraphic coins in Arabic. For many scholars, these evolving slogans and reforms echo a debate about legitimacy and religious identity; thus, the appearance of coins is prioritized rather than the output of a particular mints or the economic output of a region. The curious mint production in Marv, in contrast, provides a unique opportunity to analyze the concern for liquidity (the production and circulation of a currency in a marketplace) over its utility as a vehicle for propaganda. The paper is based on a die study of approximately 100 surviving coins from Marv during the Second Islamic Civil War. The paper brings up two notable questions. First, the paper addresses the various solutions reflected in the die study concerning who continued to use old dies or make new ones in the name of the deposed governor. Second, the paper asks if the continued use of older mint dies by a new governor or rebel coalition suggests that there was a greater concern for the production and circulation of coins—rather than the content on the coin—than has been recognized in scholarship. Thus, I argue that numismatic reforms faced market forces and not just political ones. Answering why coins were minted in Salm’s name after he was deposed is not just about solving a curious puzzle for Islamic numismatists—it reflects the contemporary scholarly dilemma of reconciling regionally diverse material/documentary evidence with often simplistic literary (and even scholarly) explanations for changes in the early Islamic administration. The paper demonstrates that attempts to correlate theological or political ideology with numismatic slogans can lead to misguided interpretations about both the development of Islamic doctrine and the priorities of an empire.
Discipline
Economics
History
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Iraq
The Levant
Sub Area
None