2 A SPANISH DIRHAM FOUND IN ENGLAND ON page 916 of the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1807 there occurs the following notice Mr Uraan Sept. 1 ‘The coin (Fig 10) was found in the ruins of Cerne Abbey, Dorset. It has a very fair legend on both sides; and, by a ring of silver-wire affixed to it, seems to have bbeen used as an amulet by some person with whom it was probably interred. The legend is on one side of the area the usual symbol of There is one God. On the margin of the same side'In the name of God this drachm was struck at Andalusea (Cordovia) in the year (a.1.) 320° (rather doubtful). On the area of the reverse *Munwaya Billah, Emperor of the Faithful’ with a continuation of the symbol: in the margin “Mohammed is the Prophet of God’, &tc. Yours dtc. DH! Fortunately this curiously punctuated and in some cases patently inaecu- rate account is supplemented by an excellent line-engraving, ‘Fig 10° referring to plate ii opposite p. 913 of the original, and this is here re- produced Dr. John Walker informs me that it is sufficiently accurate for the coin to be identified with fuir con- fidence. It is indubitably a Spanish Umaiyad dirham of Hishim II struck at Al-Andalus, while the date is certainly not A.#. 320, which is impos- sibly early for a coin of this style, but very prob- ably A.H. 390 (= A.v. 999/1000). The exact types are not recorded for the date in Miles's corpus, but the obverse corresponds to dinar (d), while the reverse approximates pretty closely to ditham (1), the most common of the series. In other respects the engraving is so competently executed that we may fairly postulate an unrecorded but not un- expected new variety of the Al-Andalus dirham of A.H. 390, and it is, in consequence, doubly un- fortunate that the original coin can no longer be traced. The writer of this note wishes to record his indebtedness not only to Dr. Walker for reading the coin as engraved, but also to Lord Digby, the present owner of the site, and to the Curators of the Dorset County and Pitt Rivers Museums who angwered inquiries with signal courtesy. For the English and Scandinavian numismatist, even more than for the Arabist, the fact of the find is of considerable significance. The coin would appear to be the latest Kufic piece to be found in this country, perhaps by as much as half a century. If itis not the only Spanish dirham to have been discovered on English soil, it must be conceded that the incidence in * Mrs, J. S. Martin has now identified D, H. as Richard Gough. ee cE3 northern Europe of coins of the Western Caliphate is infinitesimal, even in ‘the great Scandinavian hoards where Kufic coins occur in thousands. Mrs. Ulla S. Linder Welin is engaged on a separate publication of the latter group which amounts to no more than a handful, and in a letter to the writer has remarked on the tendency of the coins to bunch around two dates, an early group from the second half of the secdnd century of the Islamic era, and a later group represented by the Hijra dates, 389-92. It will ‘be seen that our coin belongs exactly to the latter category, and the writer ‘would suggest that the Dorset find-spot is a pointer to their having been brought to Sweden by the ‘West Route” and not via the Levant and Russia. ‘A small Anglo-Saxon hoard from Roncesvallles of a decade earlier may be adduced as numismatic corroboration of a tradition of intercourse between north-western Europe and Spain,: a tradition recently so brilliantly ‘embroidered by the late Frans Bengtsson in Réde Orm, an historical novel that deserves to be read if only on account of its remarkable handling of numismatic material. Of course it is not impossible that the dirham had found its way to Scandinavia before being brought to England—indeed the suspension loop might be thought to suggest this—but it is perhaps note- worthy that the engraving does not so much as hint at the ‘pecking" of the surface that seems to have been an almost routine Scandinavian test for forgery. Again we must deplore the disappearance of the actual coin, and it is indeed to be hoped that the appearance of this note may in some way lead to its rediscovery. R. H. M. Dortey * F, Mateu y Llopis “El Hallazgo de “Pennies” ingleses en Roncesvalles', Principe ‘de Viana xi (1950), 201-10; cf. BNJ 1952, 89-91 ASPANISH DIRHAM FOUND IN ENGLAND a a ey