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Robert Hoyland gives a very convincing argument that the figure in the so-called "Standing Caliph" coin of Abdulmalik represents not Abdulmalik but Muhammad.
The first coin was minted in 74 AH / 693-694 CE and they were in circulation for three years. Afterwards imagery was dropped in coins.
Muhammad died 10 AH, 632 CE and there were still some Companions alive who had seen Muhammad when the coins were minted.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Coins/dinar3.html
R. Hoyland, "Writing The Biography Of The Prophet Muhammad: Problems And Solutions", History Compass, 2007, Volume 5, pp. 13-14.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00395.x/abstract
Postscript: Muhammad or Abd al-Malik? In AH 72/AD 691 -92, having just successfully ended a long-running civil war (66 -72/685 -92) and completed the stunning Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem with its message to Christians to respect God's Oneness and Muhammad as God's Messenger, the caliph vAbd al-Malik decided to Islamicise a little the coins used in his realm, which had up till then been copies/imitations of the Byzantine and Iranian coin types. In particular, he removed the transverse bars of the crosses67 and introduced the Muslim profession of faith: 'There is no god but God alone; Muhammad is the Messenger of God'. The Byzantine emperor Justinian II (685-95, 705-11) responded with an even more startling innovation: he relegated the image of himself to the reverse of the coin and put on the front a human effigy of Jesus Christ, both unprecendented moves (Fig. 1): In retaliation Abd al-Malik placed an image of a standing human bearing a sword in a scabbard68 on the front of his coins, the earliest dated is 74/693-9469 (Fig. 2): This is generally assumed to be a representation of the caliph himself and so the coins are known as the 'standing caliph' coins.70 However, there are a number of reasons to doubt this: Firstly, it ignores the war in visual and verbal propaganda going on between Justinian II and vAbd al-Malik and the wider issue of the use of religious images and slogans that was being hotly debated at this time.71 If, in response to Justinian's demotion of himself to the reverse of Byzantine coins in favour of Christ's effigy on the front, vAbd al-Malik had merely put his own image on the front of Muslim coins, it would have seemed a very feeble reply in the view of Christians; rather, the obvious move for him would have been to put an image that would challenge that of the image of Christ, which could only be that of the Prophet Muhammad himself. The very dramatic nature of these changes, their closeness in time, their evidently polemical overtones and enormous propaganda impact (coins circulate very widely) at a time of great tension (in particular, the Byzantines suffered a major defeat at Sebastopolis in 73/692-93) make it essential for these two innovations to be considered together. Secondly, it ignores the context of the Arab civil war of 685-92 in which religion had played a major role for diverse groups clamouring for greater social justice, and vAbd al-Malik saw the chance to steal their thunder and to heal the divisions among the Muslim community by putting Islam at the heart of the state. Henceforth, the name of the Prophet Muhammad, which had been absent from all state media (i.e. administrative documents, monumental inscriptions, etc.), became de rigeur on every official text and became pretty much standard in epitaphs and graffiti. This makes it unlikely that the image on the front of vAbd al-Malik's new coins was himself, which would have been condemned by Muslims as an imitation of infidel kings, and much more likely that it is a religious personage, again most obviously Muhammad himself. Thirdly, the iconography of the person on vAbd al-Malik's coinage is closer to that of Justinian II's Christ figure than to an emperor figure: both have long, flowing hair and are bearded,72 and both are without headgear (i.e. no turban or crown).73
Fourthly, the standing-figure coins of Jerusalem, Harran and al-Ruha (Edessa) do not, unlike those of other mints, name the Prophet Muhammad and the Caliph vAbd al-Malik, but only mention Muhammad. As Clive Foss has remarked, 'ever since the inception of portrait coinage in the Hellenistic period, the image and superscription had gone together, that is, the inscription names the figure portrayed . . . I know of no coin where the obverse inscription refers to someone different from the figure portrayed'.74 Fifthly, the objection sometimes raised, that Muslim religious authorities would have forbidden the image of the Prophet to be placed on the coins, is not really valid. It is certainly true that around this time, or shortly afterwards, the question of what images were admissible and in what context became a hot topic,75 and indeed the fifteenth-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi quotes a report to the effect that when the new coins of Abd al-Malik reached the surviving companions of Muhammad in Medina,'they disapproved of their engraving, for it contained an image, although Said ibn al-Musayyab (a famous lawyer of Medina) bought and sold with them finding no fault with them at all'.76 BernardZ ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:26, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
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Reviewer: AhmadLX ( talk · contribs) 16:50, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
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Allright, looks great. Happy to Pass. Nice Work. AhmadLX ( talk) 19:11, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Good Article review progress box
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The result of the move request was: No consensus. ( non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 10:38, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan →
Abd al-Malik – 'Abd al-Malik' in that particular spelling almost invariably refers to Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. There are certainly other Abd al-Maliks throughout medieval Islamic history (and a handful of articles about living persons with the same name), but none obviously come close to the subject of this article in notability. This would be comparable to our articles on
Caesar,
Abu Bakr,
Umar,
Uthman and
Napoleon. I can't be in the mind of the average reader, but I'm fairly confident—based on pageviews—that most readers who type 'Abd al-Malik' in the search bar overwhelmingly are seeking this article. Moreover, typing Abd al-Malik in any major search engine (Google, Google Books, Bing) will give you page after page of links all of which are about this caliph. I'd move it myself as I don't view this as a controversial step, but thought to open a formal request just in case. Currently 'Abd al-Malik' links to the very long disambiguation page
Abdul Malik. I propose renaming this article and leaving a hatnote at the top of the page that reads: "Abd al-Malik" redirects here. For other uses, see
Abdul Malik".
Al Ameer (
talk) 22:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 180 days |
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 4, 2021. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on October 9, 2020, and October 9, 2022. | |||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
This
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Robert Hoyland gives a very convincing argument that the figure in the so-called "Standing Caliph" coin of Abdulmalik represents not Abdulmalik but Muhammad.
The first coin was minted in 74 AH / 693-694 CE and they were in circulation for three years. Afterwards imagery was dropped in coins.
Muhammad died 10 AH, 632 CE and there were still some Companions alive who had seen Muhammad when the coins were minted.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Coins/dinar3.html
R. Hoyland, "Writing The Biography Of The Prophet Muhammad: Problems And Solutions", History Compass, 2007, Volume 5, pp. 13-14.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00395.x/abstract
Postscript: Muhammad or Abd al-Malik? In AH 72/AD 691 -92, having just successfully ended a long-running civil war (66 -72/685 -92) and completed the stunning Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem with its message to Christians to respect God's Oneness and Muhammad as God's Messenger, the caliph vAbd al-Malik decided to Islamicise a little the coins used in his realm, which had up till then been copies/imitations of the Byzantine and Iranian coin types. In particular, he removed the transverse bars of the crosses67 and introduced the Muslim profession of faith: 'There is no god but God alone; Muhammad is the Messenger of God'. The Byzantine emperor Justinian II (685-95, 705-11) responded with an even more startling innovation: he relegated the image of himself to the reverse of the coin and put on the front a human effigy of Jesus Christ, both unprecendented moves (Fig. 1): In retaliation Abd al-Malik placed an image of a standing human bearing a sword in a scabbard68 on the front of his coins, the earliest dated is 74/693-9469 (Fig. 2): This is generally assumed to be a representation of the caliph himself and so the coins are known as the 'standing caliph' coins.70 However, there are a number of reasons to doubt this: Firstly, it ignores the war in visual and verbal propaganda going on between Justinian II and vAbd al-Malik and the wider issue of the use of religious images and slogans that was being hotly debated at this time.71 If, in response to Justinian's demotion of himself to the reverse of Byzantine coins in favour of Christ's effigy on the front, vAbd al-Malik had merely put his own image on the front of Muslim coins, it would have seemed a very feeble reply in the view of Christians; rather, the obvious move for him would have been to put an image that would challenge that of the image of Christ, which could only be that of the Prophet Muhammad himself. The very dramatic nature of these changes, their closeness in time, their evidently polemical overtones and enormous propaganda impact (coins circulate very widely) at a time of great tension (in particular, the Byzantines suffered a major defeat at Sebastopolis in 73/692-93) make it essential for these two innovations to be considered together. Secondly, it ignores the context of the Arab civil war of 685-92 in which religion had played a major role for diverse groups clamouring for greater social justice, and vAbd al-Malik saw the chance to steal their thunder and to heal the divisions among the Muslim community by putting Islam at the heart of the state. Henceforth, the name of the Prophet Muhammad, which had been absent from all state media (i.e. administrative documents, monumental inscriptions, etc.), became de rigeur on every official text and became pretty much standard in epitaphs and graffiti. This makes it unlikely that the image on the front of vAbd al-Malik's new coins was himself, which would have been condemned by Muslims as an imitation of infidel kings, and much more likely that it is a religious personage, again most obviously Muhammad himself. Thirdly, the iconography of the person on vAbd al-Malik's coinage is closer to that of Justinian II's Christ figure than to an emperor figure: both have long, flowing hair and are bearded,72 and both are without headgear (i.e. no turban or crown).73
Fourthly, the standing-figure coins of Jerusalem, Harran and al-Ruha (Edessa) do not, unlike those of other mints, name the Prophet Muhammad and the Caliph vAbd al-Malik, but only mention Muhammad. As Clive Foss has remarked, 'ever since the inception of portrait coinage in the Hellenistic period, the image and superscription had gone together, that is, the inscription names the figure portrayed . . . I know of no coin where the obverse inscription refers to someone different from the figure portrayed'.74 Fifthly, the objection sometimes raised, that Muslim religious authorities would have forbidden the image of the Prophet to be placed on the coins, is not really valid. It is certainly true that around this time, or shortly afterwards, the question of what images were admissible and in what context became a hot topic,75 and indeed the fifteenth-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi quotes a report to the effect that when the new coins of Abd al-Malik reached the surviving companions of Muhammad in Medina,'they disapproved of their engraving, for it contained an image, although Said ibn al-Musayyab (a famous lawyer of Medina) bought and sold with them finding no fault with them at all'.76 BernardZ ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:26, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: AhmadLX ( talk · contribs) 16:50, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Misc.
Sources
Images
Allright, looks great. Happy to Pass. Nice Work. AhmadLX ( talk) 19:11, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Good Article review progress box
|
The result of the move request was: No consensus. ( non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 10:38, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan →
Abd al-Malik – 'Abd al-Malik' in that particular spelling almost invariably refers to Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. There are certainly other Abd al-Maliks throughout medieval Islamic history (and a handful of articles about living persons with the same name), but none obviously come close to the subject of this article in notability. This would be comparable to our articles on
Caesar,
Abu Bakr,
Umar,
Uthman and
Napoleon. I can't be in the mind of the average reader, but I'm fairly confident—based on pageviews—that most readers who type 'Abd al-Malik' in the search bar overwhelmingly are seeking this article. Moreover, typing Abd al-Malik in any major search engine (Google, Google Books, Bing) will give you page after page of links all of which are about this caliph. I'd move it myself as I don't view this as a controversial step, but thought to open a formal request just in case. Currently 'Abd al-Malik' links to the very long disambiguation page
Abdul Malik. I propose renaming this article and leaving a hatnote at the top of the page that reads: "Abd al-Malik" redirects here. For other uses, see
Abdul Malik".
Al Ameer (
talk) 22:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)