Dinar - Abu'l-'Abbas Ahmad II Sijilmasah

Ahmad II — better known as Ahmad al-Mansur, the Saadian sultan who crushed the Songhai Empire at Tondibi in 1591 — controlled Sijilmasa as the northern terminus of trans-Saharan gold routes that his own military campaigns had violently extended southward. The mint there was not incidental; it was a direct instrument of that wealth, striking dinars from gold flowing north out of the Sudan.

Al-Mansur died in 1603 amid a plague that also killed three of his sons, triggering a succession war that fragmented Saadian power within a generation. A 1596 Sijilmasa dinar falls near the absolute peak of his treasury's capacity.