temp. al-Ma’mun ‘Abd Allah, ‘Abbasid Caliph AH 194-218/AD 810-833

SICA-3, 233; BMC I, 260; A 222A.1, Extremely Fine

No mint name (Madinat al-Salam). Kalima at center, double obverse marginal legends with Qur’an 30:4-5 (“to Allah belongs the command before and after, and in that day the believers shall rejoice in the victory of Allah”) in outer margin and date formula in inner margin; Reverse, continuation of Kalima, “lillah” above, Qur’an 9:33 in margin.

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Al-Ma’mun (AH 194-218/ AD 810-833) was the son of Harun al-Rashid from a Persian mother. His greatest achievement was the creation of the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad which became the center of exploration in mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astronomy. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, the Persian mathematician, is considered the founding father of algebra as a discipline. Crucial to al-Khwarizmi’s algebra was the incorporation of “zero” from the Indian numeric system into the Arabic numerals which we still use today. The English word “algorithm” derives from the name al-Khwarizmi. Jabir ibn Hayyan, the great Persian polymath born in Tus, is credited as a father of modern chemistry through his work in alchemy. In his Dictionary of 1755, Dr. Samuel Johnson ascribed the origin of the English word “jibberish” to the memory of Jabir, whose voluminous works were often obscure and difficult to understand.