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Dirham - Al-Aziz Muhammad Aleppo
| Issuer | Ayyubid Emirate of Aleppo |
|---|---|
| Year | 1218-1237 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Round (irregular) |
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| Obverse description | Epigraphic type with no figurative imagery, typical of Ayyubid silver coinage. The field displays multiple horizontal lines of Naskh Arabic script arranged in stacked registers across the flan. The central legend contains the Shahada (Islamic profession of faith): 'La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah' (There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God). The marginal or outer legend references the Abbasid suzerain caliph al-Nasir and the Ayyubid overlord al-Adil, affirming political legitimacy. The coin exhibits characteristic irregular flan shape resulting from the hand-hammered production technique. |
|---|---|
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Al-Aziz Muhammad ruled Aleppo for nearly two decades as a largely compliant vassal, first under his uncle al-Kamil of Egypt and later under the pressure of the Khwarazmian invasions fragmenting the broader Ayyubid world. His long reign produced an unusually dense sequence of die varieties — the Balog reference numbers alone span nearly twenty recorded emissions — suggesting active and continuous mint operation through a period of considerable political turbulence.
The Aleppo mint under al-Aziz was among the most prolific in the Ayyubid system during this stretch, a function of the city's position as a commercial transit point between Anatolia and the Levantine coast.