Umayyad Caliphate, Gold coinage. AV Dinar (19.1mm, 4.04 g, 6h). Ma‘din Amir al-Mu’minin bi’l-Hijaz mint. Dated AH 105 (AD 723/4). Obverse margin: Muḥammad rasul Allah arsalahu bi’l-huda wa din al-haqq li-yuzhirahu ‘ala al-din kullihi, Obverse field: La ilaha illa / Allah waḥdahu / la sharik lahu / Reverse margin: bism Allah duriba hadha al-dinar sanat khams wa mi’at, Reverse field: Allah ahad Allah / al-samad lam yalid / wa lam yulad. Ma‘din / amir al-mu’minin / bi’l-Hijaz. Fahmy 130 (same dies); Bernardi 48Ed; Album 134K; ICV 232; cf. Morton & Eden 48, lot 12 (same obv. die). In NGC encapsulation 6978029-001, graded AU 50. Extremely rare, only the third example to be offered at auction.
From the collection of Yahya Jafar, Dubai.
Only two examples of this remarkable coin have ever been offered for sale at auction, both of which are now understood to be held by institutions. Both pieces achieved the same hammer price of £3.1 million:
• Morton and Eden (London) auction 46, 4 April 2011, lot 12 ($6,000,000 including 20% buyer’s premium)
• Morton and Eden (London) auction 103, 24 October 2019, lot 11 ($4,780,000 including 20% buyer’s premium)
These two pieces are included in the most recent census of these coins (Vardanyan 2022), which lists a total of nine published specimens. To this can be added the coin offered here, which was struck from the same pair of dies as the example sold in April 2011.
Specialist References:
Bernardi 2010 Bernardi, G., Arabic Gold Coins Corpus I, Trieste, 2010.
Fahmy 1965 Fahmy, A.M., Fajr al-sikka al-‘arabiyya, Cairo, 1965.
Miles 1950 Miles, G.C., Rare Islamic Coins, ANS Numismatic Notes and Monographs 118, New York, 1950.
Miles 1972 Miles, G.C., ‘A Unique Umayyad dinar of 91h,’ Revue Numismatique, 6e Serie, Tome 14 (1972), pp. 264-268.
Vardanyan 2022 Vardanyan, A., The Jeselsohn Collection of the Coins of the Holy Land: Volume IV, Islamic and Crusader Coinage, Jerusalem, 2022.
EXTREMELY RARE AND OF GREAT HISTORICAL INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE, dinars from the ‘Mine of the Commander of the Faithful in the Hijaz’ have the distinction of being the first Islamic coins which mention a location within the present-day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The inscription which makes this coin so special is to be found in the bottom three lines of the reverse field. It reads Ma‘din Amir al-Mu’minin bi’l-Hijaz, which simply means ‘Mine of the Commander of the Faithful, in the Hijaz’. Around this is the circular marginal legend giving the date of the coin, which translates as ‘In the name of Allah was struck this dinar in the year five and one hundred’.
Ma‘din, meaning ‘mine’, can be used figuratively as well as literally - much as one might describe someone as ‘a mine of information’ in English. But it is surely used in its literal sense here, referring to a place from which ores or metals are mined and recovered. Ma‘din clearly has this sense when used on ‘Abbasid silver dirhams struck less than a century after this dinar, on which it is added to the mint-name in the margin. Ma‘din al-Shash and Ma‘din Bajunays clearly mean ‘the mine at Tashkent’ and ‘the mine at Bajunays’ respectively. Moreover, legends on other Umayyad coins are either religious (verses from the Qur’an) or practical (giving information about where, when and by whom they were struck. We should not expect the significance of Ma‘din Amir al-Mu’minin bi’l-Hijaz to be anything different.
Amir al-Mu’minin, meaning ‘Commander of the Faithful’, is the caliph’s formal title. It was first used by ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (AH 13-23), some fifty years before the term khalifa, ‘successor’, came into use under ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan (AH 65-86). The title amir al-mu’minin does not otherwise appear on Islamic gold dinars before the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (AH 170-193), and the coin offered here is an example of the earliest to bear the caliph’s ancient title.
Two caliphs ruled during the year AH 105, when Yazid II (AH 101-105) was succeeded by Hisham (AH 105-125), but Miles seems right to suggest that Hisham is the caliph mentioned here (Miles 1972, p.266). Yazid II appears to have spent his last year in Syria, but Hisham is known to have travelled to Arabia, delivering a funeral speech at the cemetery near al-Madina later in AH 105 (al-Tabari 1472). Thus Hisham can be shown to have been in the Hijaz in the year when these remarkable coins were issued, while Yazid was not.
Remarkably, Miles was able to suggest a plausible candidate for exactly where the ‘mine of the Commander of the Faithful in the Hijaz’ may have been located. According to Miles, who built on earlier research by Paul Casanova, the caliph ‘Umar (AH 99-101) purchased a mine called the Ma‘din Bani Sulaym, located between Medina and Mecca at a location called al-Furu‘. This mine had previously been held by the sons of Bilal al-Harith, who had been granted it by the Prophet himself. The historian al-Baladhuri (circa AH 210-280) gives a fascinating and detailed account of the circumstances of ‘Umar’s purchase of this mine:
‘The Prophet granted certain mines in the vicinity of al-Furu‘ to Bilal b. al-Harith al-Muzani. Authorities relate that the Prophet had in fact granted Bilal a piece of land where there were both a mountain and a mine. The caliph ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz later bought part of this land from the sons of Bilal, on which another mine was then discovered. At this, the sellers said, “What we sold you was agricultural land, not a mine,” and they duly presented him with a statement written by the Prophet himself on a palm-leaf. ‘Umar kissed it, and rubbed the Prophet’s writing over his eyes. Then he said to his steward, “Find out what the income and expenses relating to that property are, charge them the expenses and give them the surplus.”’
- Al-Baladhuri, Futūh al-Buldān, 13-14 (slightly abridged and adapted).
In this episode, we are taken back to events which occurred during the most important, formative years of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad himself is seen bestowing a grant of land on one of his Companions, Bilal b. al-Harith. Bilal had the honour of being the standard-bearer for the contingent from Muzayna which fought alongside the Prophet in the Capture of Mecca in AH 8 (AD 630), and among the many authorities cited by al-Baladhuri for his account of these events is a freedman of Bilal himself.
Once the mine had been purchased by the caliph ‘Umar, Miles had no difficulty accepting that it could have then been passed down to his successors: ‘Casanova quite reasonably argued that the mine became known as the Mine of the Amir al-Mu’minin and that Yazid II inherited it from his predecessor; hence the phrase amir al-mu’minin on the issue of 105 H’ (Miles 1972, p. 266). If this is correct, then the mine mentioned on this coin not only belonged to at least three caliphs, but had previously been granted by the Prophet Himself as a gift to one of His Companions.
Thus the existence of a ‘Mine of the Commander of the Faithful in the Hijaz’, as so named on this coin, finds support from both geographical and historical sources. We know that the caliph Hisham himself was in the Hijaz during the year that this coin was struck, and we know that a gold mine in the Hijaz had been purchased by a preceding caliph only five years previously. What is less clear, and which remains the subject of scholarly debate, is why it was felt important to add this phrase to these extremely rare dinars, and what information this was intended to convey.
Most Umayyad gold dinars do not bear a mint-name. Because almost all Umayyad gold was struck at a single mint, usually located in Damascus, this seems to have been felt unnecessary. But a small number of dinars with mint-names were issued in Spain and North Africa from AH 100 onwards, and examples dated AH 105 accordingly have marginal legends reading duriba hadha al-dinar bi-Ifriqiya sanat khams wa mi’at (‘Was struck this dinar in Africa in the year five and one hundred’). Because the Ma‘din legend on the present coin is not found in the margin, where the mint is invariably placed on Umayyad dinars and dirhams, some scholars have inferred that Ma‘din Amir al-Mu’minin bi’l-Hijaz cannot be a mint-name in the normal sense. Rather, it has been suggested that it must indicate the source of the gold, which was mined in the Hijaz but taken elsewhere to be coined. This was the view of Miles, who wrote ‘I think we must assume that this special issue, like the usual ones, was the product of the Damascus mint, and that the phrase ma‘din, etc., refers to the gold from which the coins were struck.’ (Miles 1972, p. 267). But if this were correct, why do other mediaeval Islamic gold coins not carry similar information? Gold and silver must have come to Islamic mints from many sources, mines included, and the ‘Mine of the Commander of the Faithful in the Hijaz’ can hardly have been active in AH 105 alone. If one looks for possible reasons specific to the year AH 105, the most obvious ones are surely the accession of the new caliph (Hisham), his journey to the Hijaz, and his visit to al-Madina. These events are centred on Arabia, not Damascus. Moreover, the suggestion that the coins were struck in Damascus using gold sent there from the mine seems difficult to reconcile with what we know of the new caliph's movements. Hisham was evidently still in Arabia in the year AH 106, not having yet returned to Syria.
As evidence for his belief that the Ma‘din Amir al-Mu’minin bi’l-Hijaz dinars were struck at Damascus, Miles demonstrated that the obverse dies used to strike these coins were not only prepared at the Umayyad capital, but were used at the mint there. Proof of this comes from the existence of standard Umayyad dinars dated AH 105, struck using the same obverse dies as the special Ma‘din coins. But we know that coin dies, including ones which had already been used, could and did move between mints in the mediaeval Islamic world, and the simple tools needed to strike coins by hand were eminently portable. Die-linking the Hijaz dinars to regular Umayyad ones shows that the dies used in their manufacture were prepared at Damascus (incidentally confirming the authenticity of these coins also). Given that Damascus was not only the capital but the location of the main Umayyad gold mint, this is unsurprising. But this does not mean that dinars with the Ma‘din Amir al-Mu’minin bi’l-Hijaz legend were necessarily struck at Damascus. And if Hisham had wished to take mint-workers and equipment with him on his journey to the Hijaz, with a view to striking coins on his travels, one would surely expect the mint-workers to have taken existing, usable obverse Damascus dies with them rather than preparing new ones.
Given that a major pilgrim route went right past the Ma‘din Bani Sulaym – an inscription recording the rebuilding of this road in AH 304 was found among old mine-workings there (Miles 1950) – Hisham might easily have taken decided to visit his mine en route and strike a small quantity of special gold dinars there bearing the Ma‘din Amir al-Mu’minin bi’l-Hijaz legend. Because this legend was quite lengthy and could not be accommodated in the marginal legend, the die-engravers decided to fit it in the last three lines of the obverse field instead. This explanation requires no speculation as to why it was necessary to name the Hijaz mine and the year AH 105 on Umayyad dinars, but not other mines or other dates. Thus we have good reason to believe that these excessively rare, fascinating and historically important coins were not just struck from gold mined in the Hijaz, but are also the first Islamic gold coins struck in present-day Saudi Arabia.
The final winners of all Triton XXIX lots will be determined at the live public sale that will be held on 13-14 January 2026.
Triton XXIX – Session Four – Lot 920-1141 will be held Wednesday afternoon, 14 January 2026 beginning at 2:00 PM ET.
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