Name: Muʿāwiya's columns to Taymāʾ and lower Wāqisa (39 AH)
Start: 0659

Summary

In the year 39 AH Muʿawiya dispatched ʿAbd Allah ibn Masʿada al-Fazari to Tayma. Al-Dahhak ibn Qays had instructed him to pass below Waqisa and raid whoever passed by from Iraq who was not under obedience. Muʿawiya himself marched until he came near the Tigris, and then turned back. ¹.

Abd al-Malik's Coinage Reform

Heraclius's dinars and the Persian Baghliyya dirhams reached Jahiliya Mecca and traded only as bullion: their mithqal twenty-two qirats less a fraction, ten dirhams seven mithqals, the ratl twelve uqiyyas of forty dirhams — weights the Prophet confirmed, and Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, and Mu'awiya after him. Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr struck a few dirhams under Ibn al-Zubayr, later broken; then Abd al-Malik asked and tested, wrote al-Hajjaj to strike dirhams at fifteen qirats of the dinar-qirats, and struck the Damascene dinars — which came to Medina with Companions and Followers there and none objected. Al-Hasan ibn Salih: the Ajam dirhams ran great and small — twenty, twelve, ten qirats — and when Islam needed the mean for zakah they summed forty-two and struck the third, fourteen qirats, so ten Arab dirhams weigh seven mithqals. Quraysh's weights: the dirham for silver, the dinar for gold, ten dirham-weights to seven dinar-weights, the sha'ira a sixtieth of a dirham, the uqiyya forty dirhams, the nashsh twenty, the nawa five — all confirmed when the Prophet entered Mecca. And Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab, asked who first struck engraved dinars, said 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan — dinars came Byzantine, dirhams Kisrawi and few Himyari'.

Muʿāwiya's columns to Taymāʾ and lower Wāqisa (39 AH)

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Syrians

Iraqis

Summary

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Sources

Abd al-Malik's Coinage Reform