Umayyad Caliphate. Anonymous issue, temp. Muʿāwiya I ibn Abī Sufyān, AH 41-60 / AD 661-680. Solidus (Gold, 21 mm, 4.34 g, 6 h), dechristianized pseudo-Byzantine solidus, uncertain mint, probably Syria, no date. Heraclius, Heraclius Constantine and Heraclonas, wearing crowns with the crossbars removed, standing facing, each holding in his right hand a globus cruciger with the crossbar removed. Rev. VICTORIA AVGЧB / CONOB Modified cross potent set on four steps, the crossbar removed; I and A in fields. Bernardi 4. Miles, Earliest Arab Gold Coinage, Group IV var. (different field letters). Walker p. 18, 54 var. (different field letters). Of the highest rarity and of great historical importance. In exceptional condition, and a remarkable witness to one of the great religious transformations of world history, standing at the threshold between the Byzantine-Christian and early Islamic worlds. Tiny marks and minor flan faults on the edge, otherwise, extremely fine.
This extraordinary solidus belongs to the earliest and most experimental phase of Arab-Islamic gold coinage, before the introduction of the fully epigraphic Umayyad dinar under ʿAbd al-Malik (AH 65-86 / AD 685-705). Its model is the late Byzantine solidus of Heraclius with his sons Heraclius Constantine and Heraclonas (SB 758 ff.), but its explicitly Christian symbols have been deliberately altered: the crossbars have been removed from both the crowns worn by the standing figures and the globes they hold, while the reverse cross potent on steps has been reduced to a modified vertical form. The result is a remarkable witness to the religious as well as political transformation of the seventh-century Near East. The coin retains the familiar structure and visual authority of Byzantine-Christian gold, with three imperial figures, a Latin-style victory legend and the conventional CONOB mark, yet systematically modifies its most overtly Christian elements to accommodate the emerging Islamic religious and political order. It remains figural and unmistakably Byzantine in appearance, but its imagery has acquired a fundamentally different religious meaning. The type is also important as a visual precursor to the later Umayyad Standing Caliph dinars, which likewise combine a standing ruler on the obverse with a modified cross-on-steps reverse before the complete epigraphic reform of AH 77 / AD 696/7. In this sense, the coin stands at a crucial threshold: between Byzantine-Christian imperial imagery and the development of a distinctively Islamic visual and monetary language. Few coins embody so vividly the profound religious transformation that accompanied the emergence of the early Islamic state. The I - A marks in the reverse fields add further interest. Related specimens are known with different field-letter combinations, but this variety is of the highest rarity. Whether these letters served as issue marks, copied Byzantine control marks, or formed part of another system remains uncertain. The original purpose of these coins remains debated, whether for local circulation in Syria and the southern Levant, for payments connected with Byzantine-Arab diplomacy, or for both. Their rarity today reflects the limited and experimental nature of the issue. More importantly, their transformation of the inherited Christian imagery of Byzantine gold gives them an exceptional place in the history of early Islamic coinage, capturing in a single object one of the great religious and cultural transitions of the early medieval world