'Extremely fine’ gold dinar from the fifth Umayyad caliph, £190,000 at Morton & Eden.
Instead of the modified crosses and imperial images found on previous gold issues, his new dinars were purely epigraphic, bearing quotations from the Qur’an.
This ‘extremely fine’ gold dinar is a very rare survivor from the first year of a purely ‘Islamic’ coinage – a type that lasted unchanged until the fall of the Umayyad caliphate. Previously sold by Roma Numismatics in 2017, it took £190,000 at Morton & Eden on October 22.
The buyer's premium was 20%.
