Research News:
Dutch Medal Show
An exhibition entitled "The Proud Republic: Dutch Medals of the Golden Age" will run from May 6 through July 27, 1997, at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, in New York. The show is curated by ANS Council Member Stephen K. Scher, who curated the exceptionally successful "Currency of Fame" exhibit at the Frick and other venues in 1994. The current show concentrates on Dutch medals of the seventeenth century, preceded by a sampling of sixteenth-century Italian and Netherlandish pieces. Included in the exhibit are ten medals from the ANS's strong holdings of Dutch medals.
The exhibit will be accompanied by a catalogue written by Dr. Scher, with photographs by John Bigelow Taylor. Two lectures will be given in conjunction with the exhibit. On May 14, Cynthia Lawrence of Temple University will speak on "Inventing a Popular Patriotic Tradition: The Commemoration of the Dutch Naval Heroes," and on June 11, Scher will speak on "A Chronicle in Silver: Dutch Commemorative Medals of the Golden Age." Both lectures are open to the public without charge or reservation and will be held at 5:30 at the Frick. For further information, call (212) 288-0700.
Arab-Byzantine Forum
The third meeting of the Society's Forum on Arab-Byzantine numismatics will take place on Sat., Nov. 15, at 10:00 A.M. Specialists in the Byzantine-style coinage issued under Arab rule in the eastern Mediterranean lands will exchange reports of their new finds and findings. The forum will be co-sponsored by the Oriental Numismatic Society.
A more formal notice will be sent out later to those known to be interested in the field, but anyone who would like to make a brief presentation to the group is invited to notify Society Curator of Islamic Coins Michael Bates. We would be delighted to hear from new contributors. Contributions on related, non-numismatic historical topics are also welcome, particularly on the transition from Roman to Muslim rule in Bilad al-Sham.
The Forum will last all day. A registration fee of $20.00 will cover the cost of postage and printing, coffee, doughnuts, cookies, and an informal lunch. There is no cover charge for the entertainment!
Numismatic Congress
The twelfth International Numismatic Congress will be held in Berlin September 8-12, 1997. The event will feature over 400 papers on all aspects of numismatics, and will include a day of excursions. A highlight will be a plenary paper by John M. Kleeberg, ANS Curator of Modern Coins, on "The International Circulation of Spanish American Coinage and the Financing of the Napoleonic Wars."
The registration fee, until June 15, is 150 DM (about $90) or 75 DM for students; thereafter it rises to 200 and 100 DM respectively. Information regarding registration may be obtained from Angela B. Scholz Holland PCMA Professional Congress and Marketing Agency GmbH Kirchstrasse 1 D-14199 Berlin, Germany tel. 49-30-823-2444 fax 49-30-824-4076 e-mail: 106137.67@compuserv.com.
All the members of the Society's curatorial staff are planning to attend, and visitors to New York should take this into account for the visits to the Society during the week of September 9- 13.
In conjunction with the INC there will be a special ANS members' breakfast. This will give members who live far away from New York a chance to get together at a European site for numismatic conversation and discussion.
Exhibit for Medievalists
An exhibit entitled "Medieval Mediterranean Trade Coinages" was central to the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, held at the University of Toronto from April 17 through 20. The exhibit, which featured coins from the Society's Medieval, Roman, and Islamic cabinet, was curated and installed by ANS Curator of Medieval Coins Alan Stahl. The exhibit was displayed in the main hall of the University Art Centre which, as the site of the welcoming reception, was visited by the 400 scholars in attendance. At the meeting itself, Dr. Stahl gave a paper entitled "Venetian Commerce in the Later Middle Ages; Feast or Famine?" Among other ANS seminar alumni who participated in the meeting were Constance Hoffman Berman, Thomas N. Bisson, Andrew Kurt, Karl F. Morrison, Carol Neel, and Lisa Wolverton.
Financial Opportunities
The Graduate Seminar
This year's Graduate Seminar, the forty-fifth, will take place June 17-August 15 at the museum. The visiting scholar will be Dr. Michael Alram of the Bundessamlung von Medaillen, Munzen und Geldezeichen, Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Vienna. Dr. Alram is a specialist in the coinage of pre-Islamic Iran, but has also written on Roman coinage.
This year's committee on the Graduate Seminar consisted of the five curators and Professors Hornsby and Kroll. Twelve students have been admitted, and a thirteenth (Ms. Papaevangelou) designated as the foreign admittee, who will come without financial aid. As of this writing, all but Ms. Papaevangelou have indicated their intention to attend.
The students, with their affliations, are as follows: Joel Allen, Yale University; M. Shane Butler, Columbia University; Mary Margaret Fulghum, Harvard University; John C. Hansen, University of North Carolina; Martha G. Jenks, University of California, Berkeley; Brian Klinzing, Fordham University; Kriszta Kotsis, University of Washington; Cindy L. Nimchuk, University of Toronto; Carlos F. Norena, University of Pennsylvania; Cleopatra Papaevangelou, Aristoteleion, Thessaloniki; Sara E. Phang, Columbia University; Joshua D. Sosin, Duke University; and Kevin Uhalde, Princeton University.
The Seminar is supported by a generous grant from Mr. and Mrs. Eric P. Newman.
The Graduate Fellowship
A committee consisting of the curators considered four highly qualified candidates for the Graduate Fellowship, which carries a stipend of $3,500. They unanimously voted to select Eric J. Hanne, of the University of Michigan, an alumnus of the 1996 Graduate Seminar. Mr. Hanne is preparing a dissertation with the working title "The Caliphate Revisited: Abbasid Politics in the 11th and 12th Centuries." His anticipated date of completion is August 1998.
RNS Prize to Malek
At its February 1997 meeting, the Council of the Royal Numismatic Society in London awarded ANS Associate Member Mehdi Malek the Shamma Prize in Islamic Numismatics. This prize is awarded every two years for the book or article(s) during the previous three years which in the view of the Council is the most useful to students of Islamic numismatics. The prize was awarded for Mehdi Malek's article on the coinage of Tabaristan in northeastern Iran, "The Dabuyid Ispahbads of Tabaristan," AJN 56 (1994-95), pp. 105-60 and pls. 11- 17, and "A Hoard Group of Drachms of the Dabuyid Ispahbads and Early 'Abbasid Governors of Tabaristan," NC 1996, pp. 175-91. In researching the series, Malek made extensive use of ANS facilities, including photographs provided the by the ANS photographic services and assistance from Islamic Curator Dr. Michael Bates. The Shamma Prize was awarded jointly and was shared with Monica and Robert Tye for their book Jitals: A Catalogue and Account of Coin Denomination of Daily Use in Medieval Afghanistan and North West India (1995).
Bates at Columbia
In January the Middle East Institute at Columbia University was host for a lecture by Society Curator of Islamic Coins Michael Bates. Speaking on "A Turning Point in Abbasid History: Ab Isq's Coup of 833," Bates discussed the seizure of power by Ab Isq, brother of the caliph al-Ma'mn, during the latter's fatal illness while on campaign in Roman territory. According to an eyewitness account, the caliph, Ab Isq, and others ate dates brought from Iraq and drank the fresh cold water of a mountain stream above Tarsus on the frontier between the caliphate and the eastern Roman empire. All those who ate the dates and drank the water immediately felt feverish and were ill for some time, but the caliph was much more strongly affected. He perhaps suffered a stroke and seems never to have regained full consciousness before his death some days later.
It had been generally assumed that alMa'mn would be succeeded by his son alAbbs, but al-Abbs was elsewhere on campaign in Roman territory. Ab Isq persuaded the chief scribe to send out announcements naming Ab Isq as successor and got al-Abbs to rush to his father's bedside leaving behind him the army he commanded. Although an elaborate written testament and a private deathbed injunction are recorded, these were probably concocted by Ab Isq and his allies among the scribes, since several texts depict the caliph wavering between hallucination and unconsciousness from his stroke until his death.
The vivid proof-text, which has been previously overlooked, is in Ibn Atham's history written a generation later. Some official letters were to go out; Abu Ishaq asked the chief scribe to "Put in the letters 'from Abd Allah al-Ma'mun Commander of the Believers and his brother Ab Isq the successor."' The scribe replied "You must want to see my blood shed," but Ab Isq responded only "I would like you to do that." So, says the scribe (who narrates the report), "I made a friendly response for the moment, but I asked the doctors about the caliph. They said 'He's practically dead.' I asked the chief doctor's advice about Ab Isq, so he gave me a look that told me practically everything, and said 'Write what you like.' So I wrote what Ab Isq wanted."
Ab Isq's decisive action got him the caliphate, despite protests by some elements of the army. He became the caliph al-Mutaim, ancestor of all subsequent Abbsid caliphs. It was for this reason that most of the historians who wrote under those caliphs glossed over his usurpation, although there are cautious indirect allusions to it by al-abar and others.
The subject of the lecture was nonnumismatic, but al-Mutaim, soon after his accession, ordered a major innovation in Islamic coinage by having the caliph's name written in standard form and location on all caliphal issues. This change became the basis for the sovereign's exclusive right to be named on coins in later centuries. Using slides, Bates described very briefly the developments in Islamic coinage that led up to al-Mutaim's change.
Bates Addresses New York Numismatic Club
On April 11, Michael Bates, Curator of Islamic Coins, was the speaker at the monthly meeting of the New York Numismatic Club, replacing Club President John Kleeberg, ANS Curator of Modern Coins, who was in Los Angeles on Society business. Bates's subject was "The Origin of the Quarter Dinar." The earliest quarter diners are Aghlabid, but the first nine listings of quarter diners in Muhammad al-Ush's standard catalogue of Aghlabid coinage are all false. The first authentic quarter diners are dated 264 in the Hijra era, equal to 878, which is precisely the year in which the Aghlabids captured Syracuse, the Byzantine capital of Sicily, completing the Muslim conquest of the island.
In taking Syracuse, the Aghlabids put an end to Byzantine minting in Sicily. Bates proposed that the quarter diner originated at that same time as a continuation of the tremissis or one-third solidus of Byzantine Syracuse. During the ninth century, the weight of the tremissus had declined to about one gram, making it natural for the Muslims to regard it as one fourth of their diner and for them to create a new denomination to take the place of the tremissus in the Sicilian economy.
The quarter diner spread widely throughout the Muslim Mediterranean in the tenth and eleventh centuries, from Spain to Syria. It was also issued by the Italians, who called it tari. Tari mints operated at Amalfi and Salerno in the tenth century, and the Normans and Swabians continued to strike the quarter diner with Arabic inscriptions in Sicily for nearly two centuries. As a denomination, though no longer a gold coin, the tari was in use until the nineteenth century.
Michael Bates Speaks to Students at Princeton
Society Curator of Islamic Coins Michael Bates visited Princeton on April 1 to introduce Islamic numismatics to students in Professor Avram Udovitch's "Seminar on Non-Textual Sources for Islamic History" in the Dept. of Near Eastern Studies. Bates distributed copies of his one page summary of major events in the history of Islamic numismatics, his compendium of textual quotations and bibliography for pre-industrial monetary history, and his bibliography of general references for Islamic numismatics. He then described the origin and early development of Islamic coinage, followed by a lively discussion of methodology in the study of numismatics and the interpretation of evidence for monetary history. The students had prepared mini-research papers using numismatic references, which were presented and critiqued.
In addition to Professor Udovitch, an alumnus of the Society's Graduate Seminar (1961), there were also present Dr. Brooks Emmons Levy, curator of Princeton's Firestone Library Numismatic Collection and a Graduate Seminar alumna (1952), and Professor Michael Cook of Princeton. After the class Udovitch took the entire group out for a delicious dinner at a Princeton Chinese restaurant and, to top off the evening, the Hale-Bopp comet was spotted low in the sky on the way home.
Alan Stahl at Cambridge Symposium
Alan Stahl, ANS Curator of Medieval Coins, participated in the Second Cambridge Numismatic Symposium, February 28 through March 1, at the University of Cambridge, England. The conference, organized by Lucia Travaini of the Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum, was on the subject "Local Coins, Foreign Coins: Italy and Europe, 11th to 15th Centuries." Dr. Stahl's presentation was on the topic "The Circulation of Medieval Venetian Coinages." Based on research done for his forthcoming book on the mint of Venice in the Middle Ages, the paper examined documentary and numismatic evidence for the area of circulation of medieval Venetian coinages and concluded that the various denominations filled specific monetary niches and had individual areas of circulation.
The commentator of the symposium was Peter Spufford of Queens' College, Cambridge. Other presenters included Andrea Saccocci of the University of Udine (last summer's ANS visiting scholar), Angelo Finetti of Perugia, Marc Bompaire of the CNRS in Paris, Jens Christian Moesgaard of the Fitzwilliam Coin Cabinet, Barrie Cook of the British Museum, Ulrich Klein of the Wurttemberg Museum of Stuttgart, and Jorgen Steen Jensen of the Royal Danish Collection.
Stahl commented on the meeting: "This is the most useful kind of conference for research—a small group of scholars working on closely related topics and issues. The papers I heard were of great interest to me, and the comments I received on my own work were extremely useful. I congratulate Dr. Travaini for organizing the symposium and for bringing her own spirit of continental warmth to it." The papers of the symposium are scheduled for publication in a monograph edited by Travaini to be published by the Rivista Italiana di Numismatica.
