A MAMLK HOARD OF HAMAH

(SEE PLATE XLIX)

In January 1962 Mr. J. M. Eisenberg of New York was good enough
to permit me to examine a lot of 305 Mamlk silver coins which he had
acquired.1 All these coins, of which 297 were dirhems and eight apparently half-dirhems, were specimens of a single issue of the Bahri
Mamlk sultan al-Mansr Sayf al-Din Qal'n, struck at the Syrian
mint of Hamh in the last year of his reign 689 H./I29O A.D. As this
particular issue is hitherto unpublished2 and the lot appears to constitute a hoard, a short note on the subject would seem to be in
order.
All the coins, both the dirhems and the fractions, appear to be
from the same pair of dies. The dirhems rnge in diameter from 20 to
23 mm., the halves from 17 to 18 mm. The die positions are not fixed.
All the coins are very weakly struck, not worn, s the specimens illustrated, [68]g, 68[g] and [689], PLATE XLIX, 1-4, show. The following transcriptions of the legends are reconstructed from a comparison
of several specimens :
Obv.:

Q\ <^jj

'
*-

TT

* *r o
Ornament above
1 Five of these were subsequently presented by Mr. Eisenberg to the Museum
of the American Numismatic Society (ANS 62.10).
2 Cf. P. Balog, The Coinage of the Mamlk Sultans of Egypt (ANS Numismatic
Studies, No. 12, New York, 1964), no. 135, and Second Supplement, p. 394.

S?

3o8

A. N. S. MUSEUM NOTES

Rev.:

^-l

o O

4-Lyl

Ornaments before

p and after

The mint name is preserved on 147 specimens. On no single specimen is the complete date preserved, but there are a sufficient number
with either the digit or the decade or the Century, or two of the three
figures, preserved to leave no doubt whatever about the date, even
where the digit is lacking, particularly s other details show the coins
to be, s remarked, from identical dies. Five specimens are doublestruck, reverse die on obverse, and obverse die on reverse. One specimen is a brockage with retrograde traces of the reverse die on the
reverse and the obverse unaffected.
The eight specimens which I judge to be half dirhems because of
their reduced dianieters (PLATE XLIX, 5) rnge in weight from 1.08
grams to 2.06 grams (1.08, 1.46, 1.75, 1.93, 1.94, 1.97, 2.06, 2.06). The
frequencies of the weights of the dirhems, scaled at intervals of
.20 gr., are s follows:
Weight

1.61-1.80
1.81-2.00
,

>

No. of Specimens

i
i'

2.0I-2.2O
2.2I-2.4O
2.4I-2.6O
2.6I-2.8O
2.8I-3.0O
3.01-3.20

6
14
15
22
64
76

3-21-3-40
3.41-3.60

51
28

3.61-3.80

10

,.

MAMLK HOARD OF HAMH

309

Weight
No. o/Specimens
3.81-4.00
5
4.01-4.20
2
4-35
i
4-77
i
The peak therefore is at 3.01-3.20 grams, somewhat above the
figure given by Balog (op.cit., p. 41) for the period (2.80-2.90
grams). The large number of specimens in the groups on either side
of the peak (64 from 2.81-3.00 grams, and 51 from 3.21-3.40 grams)
would suggest that at this time the weight of individual dirhems was
not controlled nearly s accurately s it was in Umayyad and early
*Abbsid days.3
GEORGE C. MILES
3 Cf. G. C. Miles, "Byzantine Miliaresion and Arab Dirhem: some Notes on
their Relationship," ANSMN, IX, 1960, p. 213.

XLIX

GOLD FORGERIES OF TIGRANES

A MAMLUK HOARD OF HAMH