Speaker
Description
More than 50,000 Islamic dirhams have been recovered on the post-1945 territory of Poland. While most had been minted by the Abbasid Caliphs and the Iranian Samanid dynasty, the Buyid coinage constitutes merely a fraction of this pool (approx. 300 coins). This however, does not reflect the significance of the Buyid dynasty within the political and economic landscape of the Islamic world in the 10th & 11th century. In addition to a detailed analysis of the role played by Buyid coins found in Polish hoards, the paper examines how the developments in the Islamic world influenced Polish hoarding practices in the 10th century. Finally, we explore whether the economic shift towards Western Europe engendered by the strengthening of Piast rule could have influenced Islamic coin production.
