I’m very careful about the arguments that I use when dealing with Islam or any other religion. There are arguments out there that will stump the average Muslim, but when used on a Muslim who knows their faith will be shredded. Enter Jay Smith’s coin argument.
A few years ago when Robert Spencer came out with his book Did Muhammad Exist, I read about this and I was very impressed. I’m not impressed anymore. Every time I hear an argument I always ask myself: What does this actually prove? How much does it actually prove?
When the Muslims invaded Byzantine and Persian lands, they used their coin template instead of minting something uniquely Islamic. In the old Byzantine lands, they used the Byzantine coins with a few cosmetic changes to let them know it was Arab and not Byzantine. In the Persian lands they did the same thing but with Persian coins.
Let’s think about this for a second. You’re a Byzantine citizen and your city has fallen under Arab occupation. Who knows how long these people will stay? Maybe the Byzantines will smash them back in a few months and take back the city? Can you imagine using completely new coins? Keep in mind, the old Byzantine coins are still in circulation. Can you imagine looking in your coin pouch and seeing Byzantine coins and completely different coins? It would be normal to have a pouch of coins that look relatively alike. It would be weird to have two completely different coin sets.
Also, from the Muslim perspective, the land being ruled over is 99% non-Islamic at this point. The last thing you want is unrest from a population over something as minor as coins. Especially when these rulers have other projects in mind such as further expansion.
Also, why does currency have to have creedal statements on it? When I look at the coins in my pocket I see a picture on one side and the monarch on the other. This coin doesn’t give the constitution, government system, or majority religion of my country. It doesn’t have to. That information is available elsewhere. Come to think of it, with the exception of American coins I can’t tell you what is on the coins of any country I’ve visited. When I’m in a new country and want to learn the local customs I don’t look at the coins in my pocket. I’ll either ask around or go to a museum. The purpose of coins is to exchange them for goods and services, not to preach. You can certainly preach on coins, and the Muslims later on did as Smith points out, but you don’t have to.
Also, I find this no different than when a liberal Biblical scholar reads a passage of scripture tries to get into the head the author and determine what his agenda was when he wrote this. We’ll never know because the people who wrote the Bible are long dead. The same is true for the people who minted the coins.
There are a lot of questions to ask about early Islam. There is a lack of documents and many things that don’t fit in with the traditional narrative. However, I don’t think we can learn anything from these coins about some secret pre-Islamic belief. Sorry Jay.
I think this whole topic is representative of this one verse from Proverbs:
In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines.
– Proverbs 18:17
Shabir Ally’s commentary on the coin oddity was virtually the same as yours (and he quoted a German orientalist to support the thesis). I agree that we shouldn’t be quick to draw firm conclusions from the coin depictions, but the problems for Muslims are very much real. They want to convince us (and themselves) that the earliest Muslims were the very embodiment of Islamic orthodoxy, not to mention that Muhammad himself supposedly said that the first three generations of Muslims are the best of all Muslims, yet the coinage does get in the way. If the earliest caliphs were the “most righteous” Muslims, how on Earth did they allow coins depicting their faces, even worse- carrying Christian insignia? That makes them grave sinners before Allah and means that Muhammad was wrong after all.
“The last thing you want is unrest from a population over something as minor as coins.”- well, the Muslim invaders did much worse things, so I don’t think the altering of coins troubled them or their new subjects that much. Here is what historian Hugh Kennedy writes in his book “The Great Arab Conquests”:
“For most of the period of Muhammad’s mission, Syria and Palestine were ruled by the Persians, not the Byzantines, and it was not until 630, a couple of years before the Prophet’s death, that Byzantine control was re-established. Nonetheless, this control must have been very patchy, and there were probably many areas where Byzantine government hardly existed. Most younger-generation Syrians would have had no experience or memory of imperial rule, and no cause to be loyal to Constantinople.”
Later in his book Kennedy quotes letter from the patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius to Heraclius:
“As once that of the Philistine, so now the army of the godless Saracens has captured the divine Bethlehem and bars our passage there, threatening slaughter and destruction if we leave this holy city and dare to approach our beloved and sacred Bethlehem.”
Orientalist Sydney Griffith writes in his book “The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque”:
“There is no doubt then that in view of the stipulations of the Covenant of Umar the dhimmi populations of Christians in the Islamic world were what we would now call “second class citizens,” if the term “citizen” can even be meaningfully used of people whose presence in the body politic is merely tolerated. The legal disabilities that governed their lives required subservience, often accompanied by prescriptions to wear distinctive clothing and to cease from the public display of their religion, and, of course, to refrain from inviting converts from among the Muslims. Christian wealth, buildings, institutions, and properties were often subject to seizure.”
My point is that the early Muslims apparently had no qualms about harassing Christians and abusing their faith. Why would Muhammad’s followers care if their new subjects feel uncomfortable because of the new currency? As I said, the coins do pose tremendous problems for Muslims.
Hey Orangehunter,
I agree with you that this isn’t good for them. The question is, is it bad? The more I study about the history of early Islam, the more frustrated I get. There is such a lack of sources. The sixth century is full of historical sources about the Middle East(I’ve just acquired the Ecclesiastical history of Evagrius Scholasticus who was a Syrian Chalcedonian who worked for the Patriarch of Antioch and died in 594 AD – pretty excited to read that one) so we can know a lot about the world that the Muslims broke into.
Sadly, the 7th century provides us with very little writings for Church fathers and the few that we do have basically argue over Christological heresies of the day such as monophysitism and monothelitism. You mentioned Sophronius. He does talk a bit about the invading Arabs but most of his writing was defending Chalcedonianism against other heresies. So it’s frustrating.
So I have to ask, what do you think these coins tell us about Islam between 630 and 660? Do you believe that they were Roman Christians? Or monophysites maybe?
God bless,
Allan
“So I have to ask, what do you think these coins tell us about Islam between 630 and 660?”- they tell us that: 1) the first and second generations of Muslims (“the best Muslims” according to Muhammad!) were actually quite liberal in their ways of practicing their religion (Islam? Something else?) They not only had no problem using images and depictions (mortal sin in orthodox Islam!), but also found not detestable the adoption of Christian symbols in the depictions of their rulers;
OR 2) the earliest Muslims were not really Muslims but followers of some kind of Judeo-Nestorian sect that gradually evolved into a new religion, whose later followers got rid of the uncomfortable accounts and records, effectively creating historical narrative that suited their purposes (you’ve already noted in an earlier blog entry the almost complete lack of chronicles and other historical/religious documents from the first 60-70 years of Islam’s existence). Another telltale is the fact that all the earliest surviving chronicles of Islamic history and Hadith collections are revised/edited/condensed versions of earlier writings that for some reason were not preserved (some of them supposedly written by relatives or disciples of Muhammad’s companions). One is left to wonder why the super-ultra meticulous Islamic scholars made no attempt at all to preserve all those precious testimonies to the continuity of their religion. In conclusion- yeah, these pesky coins ARE part of the problem of our Muslim friends.
It’s possible that they were Judeo-Nestorians but I don’t see that reflected in the coin collection. It doesn’t show Islam but it doesn’t show anything else either. I suppose you’re right in the sense that Islamic iconoclasm could have developed later. Maybe around the same time as Christian iconoclasm perhaps?
I assume you trust the writings of St. Theophanes the Confessor who was a monk in Constantinople who wrote Church history up to 813 AD. How come he wouldn’t have told us the truth? What he writes meshes with the traditional Islamic narrative minus some cosmetic details. The Muslims could redact their own documents but they couldn’t redact Greek sources stored in the libraries of Constantinople which Theophanes no doubt would have used when writing his chronicles.
My point is that they have late redacted documents but the revisionists have no documents. It’s going off secondary sources or tangential references like the Doctrina Jacobi. There is the archeological evidence that Dan Gibson points out which is interesting. I think the only way that we’ll get to the bottom of this is if archeologists are allowed to do work in Arabia which is essentially illegal at the moment. They’re starting to do work in Petra so we’ll see if that brings anything.
I’m just hesistant to draw conclusions, that’s all. But I agree with you that the lack of sources early on is a huge problem for the Muslims.
Before blogging, did you write to Jay Smith to ask for clarifications about his assertions?
No, I watched his videos. I keep up to date with his work. He does some good stuff but I’m not too impressed with this.