Sunday Times 2
Gold dinar expected to sell for £500,000
The first ever coin to record the famous Islamic phrase ‘There is no God but Allah’ is set to sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds when it goes under the hammer.
Currency: The historic gold dinar being sold
The historic gold dinar from 690 AD was minted in Damascus by the Umayyad dynasty – the first Arab empire, which stretched from Spain in the west to India in the east at the peak of its power.
The coin, which weighs 0.15oz and is slightly larger than a 5p piece, comes in a set of 56 gold dinars struck between 690 and 750 – expected to sell for £500,000 at auction this month.
Dated 77 in the Islamic calendar, the words written on the coin translate in English to: ‘No God but God, Unique, He has no associate.
‘Muhammad is the messenger of God who sent him with guidance and the religion of truth that he might make it supreme over all other religions. God is one, God is eternal. He does not beget nor is he begotten. In the name of God this dinar was struck in the year seven and 70.’
Andre Di Clement, head of Islamic coins at central London auctioneers Baldwin’s, said: ‘What makes these coins so important is that they are from the first Arab empire.
‘With Umayyad the Islamic world spread from India to Spain. One of the things they did was eradicate coinage from conquered lands and introduce their own coinage systems.
‘These coins, and coins like these, would have been used to finance the building of the Umayyad empire. Each year a new coin was made.
‘At this time they were far more advanced than anybody else in the world. Although the first coin is worth £300,000 it comes as part of a set. It is one of the finest examples known.
© Daily Mail, London
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