The Byzantine coinage had a prestige that lasted until near the end of the Empire. European rulers, once they again started issuing their own coins, tended to follow a simplified version of Byzantine patterns, with full face ruler portraits on the obverse.
Numismatics, the systematic study and collecting of coins and related items such as tokens, medals, and paper money, has been a recognized scholarly discipline since the Middle Ages. Archaeologists, historians, economists, artists, and engravers have found numismatics a valuable adjunct to their respective fields of study. Coins are the official product of an issuing authority, and as such they can provide an important primary historical source of documentation concerning monetary values, patterns of economic exchange, trade routes, colonization, migration, military campaigns, linguistic and epigraphic data, mythology, religion, art, historical portraits, and views of buildings, monuments, and statues that have long since been destroyed. For the researcher in American history, numismatics can provide insights into historical economic trends.
Byzantine Coins And Their Values Pdf 21
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It is the Lydians of what is now western Turkey who are credited with the invention of coinage around 600 bce when they stamped their symbol of state on pieces of metal as a guarantee of value. Ever since, coins have proven to have value also as historical records, cultural keys, evidence of trade, relations between states and the extent of a particular economy. They are all the more valuable when written sources are absent or problematic. Such is particularly the case in the mid-seventh century ce, during the first decades of Islam in the Levant, Mesopotamia and Persia. The historical texts we have were mostly written a century or more after the events they describe. Especially scant are records of the first decades of Islam, from the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 ce to the mid-700s, that could inform us about the workings of the early caliphate and daily life in its provinces.
Several things are at work here. First, the conservative attitude that people have toward their money: In the us, for example, the one-dollar note has been virtually unchanged since 1928, and the portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the cent coin has been used continuously since 1909. In Britain, the seated figure of Britannia of the reverse of the penny lasted some 300 years. Likewise, in Syria the Byzantine types continued long after Byzantine rule. They thus represent cultural continuity: People lived in the same towns and villages; they traded with many of the same merchants; they used the same pottery and, for it all, the same coins. Perhaps most important, though, is that these coins indicate tolerance and accommodation on the part of the early caliphate. 2ff7e9595c
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