Catalogue des monnaies musulmanes: Khalifes orientaux (Lavoix)

The Catalogue des monnaies musulmanes de la Bibliothèque nationale: Khalifes orientaux was published in Paris by the Imprimerie nationale in 1887 by order of the Minister of Public Instruction, Worship and Fine Arts, compiled by Henri Lavoix, assistant curator of the Department of Medals, Engraved Stones and Antiquities. ¹ It is the volume for the coins of the great caliphate, with an index of names in Arabic and photographic plates. ^{3 4}

Lavoix says Tiesenhausen had already gathered everything published on the eastern caliphs' coins up to 1875, and that he does not mean to redo that work but to present questions that arose while cataloguing, especially on the beginnings of Islamic coinage. ² Among his points:

• The Arabs had no coinage of their own before Islam or in the Prophet ﷺ's time; Byzantine dinars and Persian dirhams reached them through trade, and after the conquests they kept the money they knew. ^{2 5}
• For nearly sixty years the registers and the mints stayed in the hands of Persian, Greek and Jewish clerks and craftsmen, until the Iraq register was put into Arabic on al-Hajjaj's order and Abd al-Malik had the Syrian register translated. ^{6 7}
• Umar kept the Sasanian dirham with its type, Pahlavi script and fire altar, the Hijri date replacing the Sasanian one; the model copied was that of Khusraw II; then the names of caliphs and governors replaced the king's, and from 25 AH every governor struck coins in the towns he governed. ⁸
• The historians disagree on the date of Abd al-Malik's reform, between 74 and 77 AH, and al-Hajjaj went on striking Sasanian-type dirhams in his own name at al-Bayda in Fars until 83 AH. ⁹
• The reform made coinage anonymous, answerable only to the supreme authority, in reaction to the minting right usurped by governors and rival caliphs such as Ibn al-Zubayr, his brother Mus'ab and Qatari ibn al-Fuja'a. ^{10 11}
• Glass weights controlled the weight of the dinar and dirham, a practice the Arabs took over from the Byzantines. ^{12 13}
• Abbasid coinage stayed anonymous until the name of the heir al-Mahdi appeared on dirhams under his father al-Mansur; Harun al-Rashid allowed his ministers and governors to be named; and the mint name first appeared on the dinar under al-Ma'mun, together with the formula of al-Rum 30:4. ^{14 15}

He concludes that, after Fraehn, Castiglioni, Marsden, Tornberg, Soret and Stickel, the coinage of the great caliphate has been studied, while that of the independent dynasties awaits a comprehensive work. ¹⁶ He thanks Henri Sauvaire for revising the proofs and dates the preface Cabinet des Médailles, October 1887. ¹⁷