Buqsha - Hamud 1223 1808

Abu ʽArish was a small but strategically significant sheikhdom in the Tihama coastal plain of what is now southwestern Saudi Arabia, controlling trade routes between the Red Sea ports and the interior of Yemen. Hamud ibn Muhammad al-Mikhlafi, the ruling sheikh at the time of this issue, was operating in a politically volatile zone — the early nineteenth century saw repeated pressure from the expanding Wahhabi-Saudi forces pushing into the region from the north.

Billon coinage from minor Yemenite states of this period is genuinely scarce in any form; local minting was irregular and often short-lived.