Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Half-Dinar
North African (Ifriqya, Tunisia)
Not on view
Notice the Latin script on this coin. Ifriqiya, as North Africa was called, was not fully Arabized after the Islamic conquest. Minted in the early eighth century during the Umayyad dynasty’s rule in Tunisia (705–50), this type of coin was unique to North Africa and Spain in the eighth and ninth centuries. Recent scientific analyses of the Arab-Latin coins have revealed close similarities in the material compositions of Byzantine and early Islamic coinage, suggesting that the latter were recycled from Byzantine coins, likely originally minted in Carthage.
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