The Enigmatic al wafa’ lillah Coinage

282, Lot: 413. Estimate $100. Sold for $190. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Imperial Image coinage. Anonymous. Circa 680s-690s. Æ Fals (18mm, 3.30 g, 3h). Uncertain mint, probably in Jordan or northern Palestine. Standing imperial figure, holding long cruciform scepter and globus cruciger; O to right / Large m with pellets between stems; cross above, [...]QO to left, cross to right, al-wafa’ lillah (“honesty belongs to God”) in exergue. SICA I -; cf. Walker, Arab-Byzantine p. 51, ANS 9; DOCAB -; Album 3523. Good VF, earthen green patina. Scarce.

From the J. S. Wagner Collection.

The mint attribution and chronology of the al wafa’ lillah coinage has been the subject of much debate. Rachel Milstein (“A hoard of early Arab figurative coins,” INJ 10, 3-26) argued that the issue was from the Damascus mint and preceded the signed coinage, while Lutz Ilisch and Michael Bates have argued that the coins were produced further south, Ilisch dating them to circa AD 690, and Bates offering the interesting argument that they were issued in the post-reform period and were intended to satisfy a population thoroughly used to figural coinage. That they are unofficial issues influenced by Damascus seems certain. See W. L. Treadwell, “The chronolgy of the pre-reform copper coinage of early Islamic Syria,” Supplement to ONS Newsletter 162 for a summation of the debate and further discussion.