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Fragment Of A Medieval Dinar?

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Archeo1982's Avatar
Netherlands
521 Posts
 Posted 01/05/2025  10:56 pm Show Profile   Bookmark this topic Add Archeo1982 to your friends list Get a Link to this Message Number of Subscribers
Does somenone recognize this coinfragment enough for an ID?
It was found in the northern part of the Netherlands.
D: 13mm
Mass:0,4

Fragment-Of-A-Medieval-Dinar?
Fragment-Of-A-Medieval-Dinar?
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tdziemia's Avatar
United States
7933 Posts
 Posted 01/06/2025  07:57 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add tdziemia to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Hi, Archaeo.
Nice mystery!
Is the D = 13 mm referring to the longest dimension of the fragment?
If yes, then maybe we are looking for a coin that is 20 mm or thereabouts (if we assume the cross is about in the center).
And perhaps 1.5 grams or more?

Do you have a guess on the composition (billon or mostly copper). Hard to tell from the photos.

Edit: When you say dinar, do you think the inscription is Arabic (which means the thing that looks like a cross is not)?
Edited by tdziemia
01/06/2025 08:10 am
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Portugal
655 Posts
 Posted 01/06/2025  4:26 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add jecz79 to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Not a dinar. That would be gold.

A dirham, silver. It is certainly arabic writing, early medieval I think. The first photo is upside down. Sorry I cannot say anything else from the fragment.
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Sap's Avatar
Australia
16806 Posts
 Posted 01/06/2025  5:22 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Sap to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Definitely early Islamic.

Quite a few Viking silver hoards contain chopped-up Islamic silver coins, as well as pieces of European silver coins. It seems they picked them up in trade, and treated them as pieces of bullion.

That at least would be my assumption as to its origin.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Russian Federation
5172 Posts
 Posted 01/07/2025  06:48 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add january1may to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
Not a dinar. That would be gold.

A dirham, silver. It is certainly arabic writing, early medieval I think. The first photo is upside down. Sorry I cannot say anything else from the fragment.


Islamic dirhams had very formulaic designs and legends, so it's often easy to recognize something as "definitely a dirham" but much harder to make a reasonable guess for the region or period. I'm not actually sure if there's even enough nonformulaic detail left to identify anything.
(There just might be. Unfortunately I can't read Arabic so I'm not sure what the remaining lettering actually says.)

Islamic silver coins circulated all over Europe in the Middle Ages - often, as this one probably was, cut up into pieces for bullion. AFAICT it is entirely no surprise to find one in northern Netherlands.
It looks like the coin had gone through quite a bit of wear before ending up underground, so it was probably pretty old by then already. Unfortunately this would probably also inhibit possible ID attempt further.

And yes, the first pic is upside down. The top line of the formulaic dirham legend is very recognizable.
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