New addition and a classification to the coins of the prince Yahya b. Omar shows the real beginning of the Almoravid dinars in addition to publishing two dinars

Abstract

Early numismatic scholars began the sequence of Almoravid coins in their primary catalogues with the coins of the second prince of the Almoravids, Abu Bakr b. ‘Umar, 448-480 / 1056-1087, starting with the dinars struck in Sijilmasa in 450 A.H. / 1058 A.D., due to the absence of earlier coins for Abu Bakr and none for Yahya b. Omar, the first Almoravid prince. Brethes published some unidentified dinars of low image quality with the coins for the Banu Khazrun. In 2006 Bank al-Maghrib republished one of those dinars with a better photo and corrected its attribution to the Almoravid prince Yahya b. ‘Umar, 445-448 / 1053-1056. Stephen Album recorded a unique dinar for Yahya b. Omar in his Checklist, but with neither illustration nor data for that dinar. In its 2017 catalog on Almoravid coinage, Bank al-Maghrib inserted another dinar for the same prince and indicated that it is has the same wording of the dinar previously published. The Bank also added a new coin reading for the same prince but without illustration. A new appearance of an unpublished dinar preserved in The FINT collection in Germany took place lately and added a complete central legend to the type of the Bank al-Maghrib’s dinar. This study presents a small catalogue of all the known coins for this prince, including the two previous dinars preserved at Bank al-Maghrib, in addition to publishing and studying another two extremely rare dinars, the first one preserved in the private collection of Mr. Khalid al-Nagy at Morocco, and the other one is preserved at the FINT collection at Germany. Through an analytical study of the contemporary historical records, this study will supply missing parts of the legends, correct the reading of one of them, and suggest when these coins were probably struck.

Keywords

• yahya ibn omar
• abu bakr ibn omar
• almoravids
• dinar.