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Solidus / Dinar 'bilingual' - Unknown - al-Andalus - Transitional coinage Spain and North Africa - Arab-Byzantine
| Issuer | Umayyad Caliphate |
|---|---|
| Year | 716-717 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1 Dinar |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse displays a central star or asterisk symbol in the field, surrounded by a circular Latin marginal legend reading HIC NON DEUS NISI DEUS SOLUS, enclosed within a beaded border. The inscription, a Latin rendering of the Islamic monotheistic declaration, is characteristic of the bilingual transitional coinage struck in al-Andalus under Umayyad authority. The lettering is executed in late Roman lapidary capitals. The design is devoid of figural motifs, marking a deliberate departure from the Byzantine prototype solidi that preceded this issue. The irregular flan reflects hand-struck hammered production typical of early eighth-century Hispano-Arabic coinage. |
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| Reverse lettering | HIC NON DEUS NISI DEUS SOLUS |
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| Additional information |
Issued in the immediate aftermath of the Umayyad conquest of Visigothic Iberia, this transitional piece bridges the Byzantine solidus tradition — still the dominant gold currency across the Mediterranean — with the emerging Arabicised coinage reforms that Abd al-Malik had imposed decades earlier in the east. The bilingual format, carrying both Latin and Arabic inscriptions, was a pragmatic concession to a population that had no framework for purely epigraphic Islamic coinage and needed continuity to accept the new fiscal order.
Production lasted only briefly before fully reformed, Arabic-only gold coinage displaced these hybrid issues entirely. The Vives-Canto reference places this among an extraordinarily small documented corpus.