Some Greek and bilingual Arab-Byzantine bronze coins of Damascus and Hims-Emesa: some new examples of iconography and palaeography, with reference to some Byzantine issues of the late 6th and 7th centuries

Abstract

There is practically nothing in the historical sources about his having shown an interest in minting bronze coins. (WALKER 1956: p. xxv) There has been some discussion about the issuing authority and chronology of the bronze coinage of Mu‘$wiya’s forty years as governor and caliph. The first bronze issues of urban mints have a terminus ante quem in the last years of his governorship, that is, in the 650s CE, to judge from an apparent hoard edited by Phillips and Goodman. (PHILLIPS-GOODMAN 1997) The earliest forms of this coinage have been called Type I, Pseudo- Byzantine or ‘imitative’ issues, which Tony Goodwin has divided into nine distinct series, Types A-I (GOODWIN 2005: pp. 16-17) An important series of these, Type B, imitations – often crudely – the obverse of Herakeios’ coins of Cyprus bearing the triple imperial image of Herakleios, Herakleios Constantine and Martina (HAHN 1981: 198a-b. FOSS 2008, nos. 3-4. ALBUM-GOODWIN 2002: nos. 505-506. GOODWIN 2005: no. 2). A more extensive series, Goodwin’s Types I D-F, bears the obverse image of emperor Constans II copied from the standard bronze coinage of the mint of Constantinople in first eight years of his reign