Medieval Islamic coins of North Africa from a buried hoard
found in 1787, during road-building excavations between Cambridge and Malden,
Massachusetts, USA. (Coins A and B)
From Saga America, Barry Fell, 1980, Published by Times books, New York,
pages 26-27, 30.
We have, in fact, a long history of recovering ancient coins from American
soil -- coins that, for some unaccountable reason, we have persistently
contrived to ignore. Take, for example, the events that occurred some two
centuries ago on a stretch of highway only a few minutes' drive from my home in
Massachusetts (USA).
The year was 1787, and the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris was
making his way along the Cambridge-Malden road (now known as Route 16), probably
turning over in his mind the prospects of the young Republic, whose very
Constitution was that year being hammered out by the Congress summoned for that
purpose. As he rounded a bend, he saw before him a cluster of people gathered
about some unusual object. As he afterwards recorded in a letter to John Quincy
Adams, he learned that some workmen had been engaged in widening a section of
the road when a pickaxe had struck a horizontal flat slab of stone buried
beneath the surface. When the slab was cleared and prized up, it was found to
serve as a protective cover of a concealed cache of ancient coins, of which "two
quarts" now lay exposed to view, hundreds of small square pieces of base metal
(a copper-silver alloy) each bearing unknown signs stamped on the faces. The
finders concluded that they were worthless, and passers-by, including Harris
himself, were invited to take away handfuls. Hundreds of coins were thus
dispersed."
Of all the people who carried off samples of these curiosities, Harris alone
took steps to place the matter on record. After fruitless attempts to identify
the inscriptions (actually Kufic, an ancient form of Arabic) and research in
Harvard Library to no result, he had illustrations drawn and these, together
with the account he sent to John Quincy Adams, were published by the American
Academy of Arts and Science, in Boston. And there the matter rested for nearly
two hundred years, until James Whittall, of the Early Sites Research Society,
chanced upon the old report written by Harris and took steps to notify me and
the American Numismatic Society."
Islamic coins have been found in hoards of hundreds in both America and
Scandinavia. Some of the Islamic coins found in America may have been brought by
Norsemen, as thousands of such coins of the ninth to the eleventh centuries are
found in the soil of Scandinavia.
Coins A and B: Medieval Islamic coins of North Africa from a
buried hoard found in 1787, during road-building excavations between Cambridge
and Malden, Massachusetts.
Coin C:, coin of Smarkand struck in 903 AD and found at Gulland,
Denmark. The central inscription reads: 'There is no god but Allah alone, and no
partner for him.' The marginal inscription reads, 'In the name of Allah was
coined this drachma [dirhem] in Samarqand.'
From Saga America, Barry Fell, 1980, Published by Times books, New York,
pages 26-27, 30.
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