Fatimid coinage
The Fatimids were particularly known for the consistently high quality of their gold dinars, which proved a potent political tool in their conquest of Egypt and led to them being widely imitated by the Crusader states in the 12th century.
The Fatimid dynasty claimed descent from Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad and wife of Ali, through Isma'il, the son of the last commonly accepted Shi'a Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq.
[2] Whatever their true origin, the Fatimids were the leaders of the Isma'ili sect of Shi'ism, and they headed a movement which, in the words of the historian Marius Canard, "was at the same time political and religious, philosophical and social, and whose adherents expected the appearance of a Mahdi descended from the Prophet through Ali and Fatima".
[5] Consequently, already during the abortive pro-Fatimid revolt led by al-Husayn ibn Zakarawayh in Syria in 903, coins were issued at the mint of Homs on behalf of the—yet unnamed—Mahdi, and in the Friday sermon the name of the Abbasid caliph al-Muktafi was dropped in favour of the "Successor, the rightly-guided Heir, the Lord of the Age, the Commander of the Faithful, the Mahdi".
[8] For example, in Sicily, the quarter-dinar—introduced by the Aghlabids, it remained the island's standard gold coin even after the Fatimid period as the tarì[10]—is by far the most common issue, while the half-dirham is almost non-existent.
This was a natural choice, since the mint and its craftsmen had been inherited from the Aghlabids, who followed the Abbasid pattern, and sudden changes in coinage are typically seen with distrust by the public.
[24] The rebels also minted gold dinars of their own at Kairouan, including Sunni and Kharijite formulas in direct challenge to Fatimid claims.
[30] While their number varied, and the dot was sometimes removed in favour of a central, horizontally inscribed field, the three concentric circles on obverse and reverse remained as the standard pattern for subsequent Fatimid dinars until the end of the dynasty.
[13][31] Unlike his predecessors, al-Mu'izz introduced explicitly Shi'a formulas proclaiming Isma'ili doctrine: the obverse side included praise to Ali as "heir (wasi) of the Prophet and the most excellent deputy and husband of the Radiant Pure One (i.e. Fatima)", while the reverse declared al-Mu'izz's and his ancestors' claims to the imamate as the "Revifier of the Sunna of Muhammad, the lord of those sent [by God], and the inheritor of the glory of the Rightly Guiding Imams".
[35] In 1130, the title of wali ahd al-muslimin was put on the coins by Abd al-Majid during his regency after the murder of his cousin, al-Amir (r. 1101–1130), before he assumed the caliphate himself as al-Hafiz in 1132.
[37][32][38] The stability of the gold coinage was important, both for commercial reasons as well as for symbolic ones, being a hallmark of stable government, a prosperous state, as well as being a vehicle for Fatimid political and religious propaganda.
[22][42] According to the historian Michael Brett, the high-quality and overtly Shi'a dinars issued by al-Mu'izz were "proof of his mission...[h]is ideological purpose created a demand which elicited a supply".
[53] Despite the severe crises of the late 11th and 12th centuries, the fineness of Fatimid gold coinage is generally reported to have remained exceptionally high throughout most of their history.
[8] Caliph al-Amir launched an investigation into the operation of his mints, resulting in the subsequent increase of the standard of the Fatimid dinars,[57] which often reached 100% purity.
[58][59] The very quality of Fatimid dinars made it a ready target for imitation by the Crusader states installed in the Levant during the turn of the 12th century.
[47] The dirham was the main silver coin, which was evaluated in relation to the gold dinar and whose intrinsic measurements are generally left unmentioned in historical sources.
