Islamic Written Sources (Manuscripts

Presenting a state-of-the-art overview of the diverse and dynamic field of Islamic manuscript studies, the purpose of this volume is to look at what has been achieved and what has yet to be done, on the occasion of the retirement of Professor J.J. Witkam from the Chair of Codicology and Palaeography of the Islamic World at Leyden University. The 20 articles contained in this volume were specially prepared by leading international scholars in their respective fields. Included are studies of specific texts of various genres, manuscript traditions, writing and scribal practice, writing materials, libraries and collections as well as cataloguing initiatives past and present. Taken together, they form a concise compendium which shows the importance of the often-neglected study of primary sources and their traditions. As such the book is both a necessary and welcome addition to the library of any serious scholar or student working in the fields of Oriental and Islamic studies.

This collection of thirteen essays addresses the intellectual, religious and literary culture of medieval Anatolia and the early Ottoman realm of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, focusing on texts written in Arabic, Persian and Old Anatolian Turkish as case studies. The introductory chapter surveys the beylik (Turkish principalities) period and the emergence of Anatolian Turkish as a vernacular literary language in the fourteenth century. The subsequent chapters present a wide range of topics, ranging from proto-Bektashi poetry and the Vefa'iyye to the emergence of the Ottoman scholarly system. These scholarly essays aim not only to move beyond Köprülü’s nationalist paradigm of Anatolian cultural life with new approaches, but also to provide background for further research and point to new avenues of inquiry in this relatively neglected field of study.
The volume may be purchased through the Ergon Publisher's website: http://www.ergon-verlag.de/en/orientalistik/istanbuler-texte-und-studien/band-34.php

This long-awaited volume is dedicated to Stanislav Mikhailovich Prozorov, a prominent Russian Islamologist, and one of the founders of the Leningrad/St. Petersburg school of Islamic studies. Few, if any, researchers in Russia can equal Prozorov’s expertise in the study of classical Islam. The catalogue of his published works includes translations of important Islamic treatises, critical editions of Arabic texts, facsimile editions of sources, ground-breaking monographs, and didactic works on Islam, all of which are unrivalled in Russia.

The two encyclopaedic dictionaries of Islam prepared and published by Prozorov deserve particular attention. The first, entitled Islam: An Encyclopedic Dictionary, was published in Moscow in 1991, and constituted an important milestone in the history of Islamic studies in Russian. The second, Islam in the Territory of the Former Russian Empire, currently consists of five volumes and has been reprinted twice. This title, work on which is still ongoing, brought together Russian and foreign orientalists, resulting in an edition which contains unique material.

Stanislav Prozorov continued to develop the scholarly traditions of the St. Petersburg school of Russian Oriental Studies, established by A.E. Schmidt, V.V. Barthold, I.Y. Krachkovsky, E.A. Belyaev and I.P. Petrushevsky among others. The methods of this school are based on the study of original sources and classical texts, using specific research methods and techniques developed within the framework of the school. As noted in one of the articles in this Festschrift, Stanislav Prozorov managed to fulfill the dream of A.E. Schmidt by establishing an independent academic school of classical Islamic Studies in St. Petersburg, and so was central to the development of these disciplines.

After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it became clear that the Soviet Union with its extensive Muslim population badly needed an objective and comprehensive knowledge of Islam. By the time Soviet officials became aware of this state of affairs, Stanislav Prozorov had already been working in the field of classical Islamic Studies for two decades, despite the ideological restrictions on, and state aversion to, religious studies at that time.

The uncompromising attitude of Stanislav Prozorov to Islamic studies as a serious subject of study stemmed from an approach which required rigorous objectivity and so deserves the highest respect and admiration. In general, his highly principled attitude towards scholarship is one of the most remarkable traits of our colleague and one which he fully demonstrated in his capacity as Deputy Director of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (until his resignation in 2015).

Nowadays, when Islam is at the centre of intense public scrutiny, an unbiased and objective study which does not accept either fanatical proselytism or narrow-minded Islamophobia is of overarching importance. Stanislav Prozorov’s rigorous methodological approach bases itself on the most accurate transmission of reliable knowledge about Islam as a comprehensive religion and philosophical worldview. Prozorov has not shied away from any uncomfortable facts and has striven to counter any belittling of the significant role of this religion in world culture. One can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is an example of devoted service to a noble cause.

This volume consists of several dozen articles, mostly written by Prozorov’s close colleagues, associates and former students. The editors felt it improper to intervene in the contributions by these authors and hence the published version of these articles may display differences in transliteration and other stylistic conventions.

St. Petersburg — Moscow, 18 January 2016

At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first century, the field of Arabic and Islamic studies became enriched by a number of multi-facetted scholarly theories challenging the traditional account on the early centuries of Islam. An author of one of them was the Israeli scholar Yehuda D. Nevo (1932-1992), working in archaeology, epigraphy and historiography. He devoted much of his career to the studying of Arabic rock inscriptions in the Negev desert, as well as to investigating literary and numismatic evidence of nascent Islam. In his theory, the gradual development of the Islamic faith, inspired by Abrahamism with an admixture of Judeo-Christianity, went through a stage of "indeterminate monotheism". Not earlier than since the end of the second century A.H. one can speak of the formation of the dogmatic pillars of Islam, similar to those we know today. This paper is an attempt to sum up Nevo's insightful input into the field of modern Islamic & Quranic studies today. Although controversial and unorthodox, many later researchers repeatedly refered to Nevo's plenty of inspiring theses in their quest for facts on Islamic genesis lost in the maze of time and shifting memory of generations.

The study of four examples of square silver coins permits us to add four new unregistered items to the numismatic catalogues of the Almohad, Mu’minid, Marinid and Nasrid issues. On the other hand, the four mintmarks under examination show the range of problems posed by these epigraphs on Almohad and post-Almohad coins: (1) ambiguous reading, (2) different names of places involved, (3) unknown names of places, and (4) an unexpected place name on a particular coin within its historical
framework.

Muslim World has been upholding the Tawhidic concept of Ubudiyyah with a massive accumulation of knowledge over the entire period in which has spurred the rise of the great Islamic civilization. In presenting the concepts, Islamic sciences have been categorized the directions of its various aspects: theoretical as well as its practical application have been indicated.However, without meticulous and appropriate division of sources in Islamic sciences the combination of the theory and practical has failed to bring about the desired results. The Islamic sciences as presented currently do not commensurate with its magnitude, depth and brilliance as can be unveiled from the universe of Islamic Knowledge from a multitude of known sources in the Muslim World and elsewhere. The gigantic sources in Islamic sciences are books, film, journals, manuscripts and etc. need to be rearranged accordingly based on current requirement through re-paraphrasing the record or data collection. To upgrade the paper discussion, the research highlights a claim on the success invading of Easters`Easters`mind as a result of spreading Bible teachings wassparked mind;do the Islamic Sciences have no role in signified the moral value into Muslim`s mind? How about the concept of Tawhid as a major revelation in producing a better human being? To answer the above questions, the paper focuses on revisiting sources in Islamic sciences using descriptive and analytic approachesto highlight the overshadowing of Islamic sciencesresulting in diminishing its real worth as the world's pioneer in the knowledge in science. ABSTRAK Dunia Islam telah meletakkan konsep Tawhidic sebagai cara menunjukkan konsep Ubudiyyah terhadap pencipta berdasarkan penulisan ilmu pengetahuan semenjak kebangkitan tamadun Islam. Dalam membentangkan konsep ilmu pengetahuan, Islam telah membahagikan ilmu pengetahuan kepada dua aspek: teori dan praktikal. Bagaimanapun, tanpa pembahagian sumber maklumat yang teliti dan sesuai, gabungan kedua-dua aspek ini gagal membawa hasil yang diinginkan. Ini kerana sumber-sumber hebat ini sama ada dalam bentuk buku-buku ilmiah, filem, jurnal atau naskah maklumat perlu disusun semula berdasarkan keperluan saat ini melalui pengkompilasi ulang rekod atau pengumpulan data. Untuk menaik taraf perbincangan kertas kerja ini, penyelidikan perlu meneliti semula dakwaan bahawa sejarah penjajahan minda terhadap orang-orang Timur oleh bangsa Eropah yang menyebarkan fahaman ajaran Bible ke dalam masyarakat Timur merupakan satu kejayaan. Kenyataan ini telah dilihat sebagai lontaran yang kurang tepat. Justeru adakah Sains Islam tidak mempunyai peranan dalam menggarap nilai moral ke dalam minda orang Islam? Bagaimana dengan konsep Tawhid sebagai wahyu utama dalam menghasilkan manusia yang lebih baik, adakah kurang berjaya? Untuk menjawab soalan-soalan yang dilontarkan, makalah ini memberi tumpuan kepada mengkaji semula sumber-sumber sains Islam menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif dan analitik bagi menyerlahkan ilmu-ilmu Islam yang dibayangi pengaruh pemikiran Barat. Maka akibat dari serangan yang berbentuk intelektual ini, telah mengurangkan nilai sebenar dunia Islam sebagai perintis di dalam ilmu pengetahuan.

An examination of the finding of Almohad silver at Priego de Cordoba (Spain) enables a series of hypotheses to be made with a view to completing the list of Mu'minid mints. The following places are considered: Agadir, Beja, Chellah, Huelva, Massah, Qal'ah and Rahbah.

"Some coins struck by the first Hammûdid Caliph of Malaga bear images of fish. The connection between such symbols and Islamic ideas on spiritual leadership are shown. The icon of
fish is explained because of the relevance of the Straits of Gibraltar in the holy Islamic map. On the other hand it may be considered as an allusion to a certain mysterious Servant of God, as well as a reminder of the Shî‘i conception of imamate."

The Archaeological Museum of Cordoba preserves three large sets of Islamic medieval coins which were minted in al-Andalus before AH 202/AD 817 and which are probably part of a
huge hoard found in Villaviciosa (Cordoba) and known of since the third decade of the 20th century. Such a large set of coins, most of them in a particularly good state, provides strong archaeological evidence to sustain that the Umayyad Emirate of al-Andalus undertook the issuing of coins as a legal resource for the market purposes and the politics of taxes. This happened from the times of ‘Abd al-Rahmân I, i.e. from the very beginnings of the Emirate, in spite of what has been claimed both in medieval and contemporary historiography.

The Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation recently opened its Digital Library Portal, providing access to a variety of works of Islamic written heritage.  One of the showcase features is the Manuscripts Collections.

The Portal gateway to Islamic manuscripts builds upon the significant work already accomplished by the Foundation through its published catalogues. In this collection, users can currently browse and search more than 50,000 manuscript records from over 100 collections private and non private previously published by the Manuscript Centre.  The new online platform facilitates the discovery of major ‘hidden’ Islamic manuscript collections.  It covers materials from basic hand-lists to comprehensive descriptive catalogues, captured in such detail as incipit and explicit, quality of paper, ink, binding etc.

The different collections will continuously be growing and soon the Manuscript section will add the collection of Ayasofiya which is over 9000 records and the Gazi Husrev Library in Sarajevo, the most important extant source of the historical study of Islamic culture in Bosnia which is over 10000 records.  This platform include other collections including the World Collections area of the Digital Library Portal presents the libraries of the World Survey in geographical context, which users can browse and explore interactively. For example, hovering over a library on the world map provides a quick preview of the library and its holdings etc.

The Digital Library Portal is currently available in English and Arabic. You can access the Portal by going to www.al-furqan.com and clicking on the Digital Library icon in the quick access bar or go directly to http://www.al-furqan.com/world_library.

First, we examine some unregistered Almohad and Post-Almohad coins, and discuss the attribution or reading of some others. As a result a discussion of a hypothesis on Idrîs al-Ma’mûn’s silver coins is offered and some new items are added to the numismatic corpus of Western Islam. This work
leads us to a general overview of the Islamic discourse prevailing in Islamic Spain and North Africa after the so-called Almohad
revolution. Considering this discourse as a dynamic work in progress, we focus on a number of issues: (1) the Qur’ânic aim of eternal life as a touchstone in the Almohad system of ideas, (2) the issue whether salvation is possible without actual human
guides, (3) the evolution from negative to affirmative theology, (4) the ties binding the numismatic discourse and the Almohad and
Post-Almohad ruling classes.

This article is structured in two parts. In the first part, the reading made by F. Codera (and followed by later scholars) of a dinar minted in Ceuta in 543H. is corrected. This correction
proves that the dinar is an anti-Almohad coin. In the second part, following the pioneering study by S. Fontenla, the issue of whether Ibn Tumart minted coins is analyzed. My answer to this question —after discussing the meaning of the «mahdism» of the founder of the Almohad movement— is negative. A related issue is that of the licit character of minting coins, with Ibn Hazm answering in the negative. I discuss to what extent the peculiar form of minting coins under the Almohads could have been influenced by the monetary theories of Ibn Hazm, and also to what extent they influenced both the Almohad caliph al-Mansur and the Ayyubid sultan al-Malik al-Kamil Muhammad.

A huge hoard of Almohad silver coins was found in Priego de Cordoba (Spain) some decades ago and is now kept in the Archeological Museum of Cordoba. Among its thousands of pieces there is one, a half dirham, which bears the name of Priego as minting place. After some considerations on the relevance of Priego during the Almohad period, we conclude with a linguistic analysis of the Arabic writing of the name. Our conclusion is that the alternative spellings for Priego reflect the difficulties to reproduce the pre-Arabic name 'Pego'.

Power point of lecture given in: Coloquio Internacional. Reflexiones en torno al-Andalus 711-
2011..  24-25 Novenber 2011. University of Cadiz .
Coordinators:
Jorge Aguadé Bofill
Jairo Guerrero Parrado

For coins of the Arab conquest and Umayyad governors see: http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/governors.html

For lead seals of the same period see:
http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/Seals.html

The epigraphic material published in the present paper derives from the town of Chalcis (Ottoman Aġrıboz/Eğriboz) and is exhibited at the Karababa Fortress; it currently belongs to the 23rd Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities. The corpus comprises fifty three inscriptions in total, forty eight funerary and five monumental. The collection covers the period from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, whereas the inscription no. 38 is probably dated in the Pre-Ottoman period (twelfth-thirteenth century). The material on which they are inscribed is white, greyish and grey coarse-grain marble of high quality, and limestone, meticulously sculpted. In most cases, the decorative patterns of the main side consist of the equitant shallow cartouches, which accommodate embossed inscriptions usually in a relief technique. Unfortunately, we do not know exactly when and where the majority of the inscriptions were found. However, the evidence for the inscriptions whose data appear in this study derives from the Inventory of the collection. The inscriptions containing clear indication of date precede the undated ones. The classification of the second group, which bears no date, has been dealt with extreme caution. The suggested dating was based on a study of the external typological criteria, including the technique used for the incision of the inscriptions, as well as a collation with dated material and similar inscriptions found in published studies. The type of script most frequently used is the basīt celī sülüs, which varies from its simplest form (kırma) on inscription nos 3 and 13, to its calligraphic style detected on inscriptions nos 25, 32, 51-53; inscription no. 38 is incised in the kūfī script.

Muslim World has been upholding the Tawhidic concept of Ubudiyyah with a massive accumulation of knowledge over the entire period which has spurred the rise of the great Islamic civilization. In presenting the concepts, Islamic sciences have been categorized the directions of its various aspects: theoretical as well as its practical application have been indicated. However, without meticulous and appropriate division of sources in Islamic sciences the combination of the theory and practical has failed to bring about the desired results. The Islamic sciences as presented currently do not commensurate with its magnitude, depth and brilliance as can be unveiled from the universe of Islamic Knowledge from a multitude of known sources in the Muslim World and elsewhere. The gigantic sources in Islamic sciences are books, film, journals, manuscripts and etc. need to be rearranged accordingly based on current requirement through re-paraphrasing the record or data collection. The paper focuses on revisiting knowledge of sources in Islamic sciences using descriptive and analytic approaches to highlight major issues and reasons for the overshadowing of Islamic sciences resulting in diminishing its real worth as the world’s pioneer in the knowledge in science.

An important numismatic hoard was found in Priego de Cordoba (Spain) in 1959 and is now kept in the Archaelogical Musueum of Cordoba, where it remains unrestored and unclassified. It contains several thousand Almohad silver pieces, struck during the 12th and 13th centuries CE, and offers an extraordinary data base for the study of dynastic, urban, artistic, economic and ideological aspects of Islamic Spain. Some religious implications of Almohad coins, considered as icons and pieces of the legitimacy discourse in a theocratic state, are explored in this paper.

This paper takes up the question of the first use of caliphal titles in the form of individual personal honorifics by al-Mansur and al-Mahdi in 145 H. The circumstances of the decision are analyzed in the light of the numismatic evidence from al-Rayy, where al-Mahdi Muhammad was governor (al-Mansur does not seem to have used his title on coins). The young governor was called al-Mahdi on a coin of Samarqand two years before the events that led to the new official titles. An examination of eastern copper coinage in the first two decades of Abbasid rule, with other literary evidence, suggests that some partisans of the dynasty had for long regarded him as the expected Mahdi of the end of the world.

""Pedram Khosronejad's Lion Tombstones among Bakhtiari Pastoral Nomads in South West Iran is to be greatly welcomed.  This study brings together anthropology, religion, popular culture, and history in its focus on Bakhtiari lion tombstones that have remained largely unknown, hence little studied and unappreciated for their importance.  Lions have long figured in Iranian history, art, and myth and have been associated with rulership and power; with heroes--including mythical ones, such as Rustam, in Firdausi's epic, Shahnameh--hence with courage and valor; with religious leaders, such as the Imam 'Ali, who for the Shi'a was the rightful successor to the Prophet; or as steadfast guardians. 
G. R. GARTHWAITE, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, HANOVER, NH
Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies, Emeritus & Professor of History, Emeritus
""

Corrected 12/1/2015. Coins of period see: http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/gov_trans_types.htm
The transitional coinage, exclusively in Latin, was struck during three years 93-95H, practically a year after the very beginning of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.  The first coins known are dated in 93H coinciding with the belated arrival of governor Musa ibn Nusair and the Arab djund, which according to some sources occurred a full year after the beginning of Tarik ibn Ziyad's raid, a long time lapse that would seem to indicate that Musa was completely unprepared for the turn of events and had evidently not give the order for the conquest. This possibility is further confirmed by his very violent beating and near execution of his runaway mawla when he finally did catch up with him all the way up near Talavera, north-west of Toledo the abandoned Visigoth capital.  It could be seen as if  Tarik's large booty raid, using mainly a few thousand auxiliary Berber infantry troops, was, after the unexpected death in battle of Rodrigo, the Visigoth king, opportunistically improvised on the spur of the moment into an accidental conquest.  If so the Umayyad rulers of Damascus would have been even more surprised than Musa by this turn of events, especially in view of the very tenuous hold that was had, at that point in time, over the Maghreb al Aqsa, probably only limited, as the chronicles and the numismatic evidence seems to indicate, to vulnerable military cantonments in Tlimsan and far away Tangiers ( For rare fals of these two locations see copper coins in http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/gov_ifriquiya_coinage.htm , in the Greater Syria area many of the fals mints seem to coincide with djund settlements which may indicate a direct relation of these early copper coins with the intendancy of the military). 
These exceptional transitional coins contain on the margin of the obverse the first part of the shahada in abbreviated Latin, mainly the consonants of the phrase are used,  the Kalima or the first part of the Shahada is in the form, IN Nomine DoNiNi= bismi Allah, Non DeuS NiSi Deus= la ilaha ila Allah, SoLuS NoSTer= wahdahu. While on the margins of the reverse is the mint in the abbreviation SPN for Hispania followed by the year of hidjra in roman numerals (ex. 93H = XCIII). On the center of the same area is the indiction dating ( Indiction is the 15 year time lapses which the Romans/Byzantines used mainly for fiscal purposes). Very much in contrast with the transitional coins struck in Ifriquiya = AFRC from 84-95H., the above mentioned coins seem to have been struck on no fixed metallic content. A very few are of seemingly good gold while others in a wide range of electrons. The general low gold content of these coins might be directly related not so much to jewelry and votive objects taken as booty but more likely to the very low gold register of the Visigoth coinage circulating at this late period. The dies of the indiction coins are extremely varied and in most cases very crudely done. It is surprising that after seeing a couple hundred of these coins that no two coins from exactly the same pair of dies appear to have been registered. This would indicate a lack of centralized control and a mint, or mints, itinerant with the various military contingents as these moved rapidly around the Iberian Peninsula at that turbulent historic period. Probably these coins represent the metallic booty of the moment, mainly Visigoth coins and objects of metallic value, that is gold & silver, taken either by war act “ghanima” or extracted by peace pact “sulh”, and which was all being rapidly monetized in situ for its quick redistribution among the military participants. It was probably done deliberately in the coinage types that the djund of Ifriquiya had been for more than a decade familiar with. The very early dating in 93H of these coins is indicative of this intentionality, as is Musa’s bringing along with his djund the necessary mint masters for implementing what seems to be a premeditated policy (1). This quickness in monetization was necessary as the djund had a violent tradition of not waiting very long for what it thought was its due share of booty. Some of the lead seals of the period seem to clearly be indicative of this rapid redistribution in situ (see 711 article in: www.academia.edu/2324901  'The new evidence of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania..’,  and also its ‘Actualization’ in www.academia.edu/5751302/ .  Also indicative of the administrative turmoil of the moment would be the period falsification of these very same coins:  www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/gov_period_falsifications.htm ).

The next transition in the coinage comes with the important bilingual coinage of the year 98H/ 716, which coincides with the year when the capital of al-Andalus was transferred from Seville to Cordoba by Al-Hurr. Before the recent appearance of the lead seals of the period of the Umayyad conquest (see fig.3 & p.149-150 in above referred article) these coins were considered to be the first extant material document for the use of the  Arabic script in the Iberia Peninsula and the first evidence of the appearance of the still enigmatic term “al-Andalus ", a word whose etymology to date, in spite of various interesting theories, still very much eludes us: it could suggest a homophonic, but improbable,” Vandalia" as suggested, by R. Dozy a century and more ago, or the mythical "Atlantida" as J. Valve not very convincingly tried to argue, or as has more recently been very interestingly argued by H. Halm that it could be derived from the traditional "Gothic Sors" in the composed word "landahlauts" that is allotted or drawn land, which in its phonetic form "landalos" according to this author, became to the Arabic ear with the addition of the beginning article, al-Andalus. This is quite a heated debate that is not going to be settled any time soon, if ever. The search, in my opinion, should commence by trying to answer the basic question of: was the word "al-Andalus" brought in or picked up in Hispania by its new masters? The earliest transitional coinage may be suggesting the latter, for if the new masters of Hispania, as we have read above, had no qualms in translating from Arabic to Latin something so important as the kalima, that is the first part of the shahada, and imposing the hidjra dating in roman numerals, then why not an Arabic mint name, had they had one? They obviously did not have one. If as Roger Collins reasonably argues the ruling Visigoth elite must have kept part of their identitary oral 'Gothic' language to communicate among themselves, indirectly indicative of this, are the intentionally gothic names chosen by their kings, nobles of both sexes and others, which would to seem to indicate then that Halm's "Landalos" may well be on the correct track. This seemingly unnecessary addition by the conquerors of a new name place, al-Andalus, for an area which already had two known ones to them, Spania & Hesperidis, must have had at the moment, under the probable governorship of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz b. Musa, an important and clear political intent of early ‘independentism’  (see text on the slides 16-18 of ‘The Seals of the Umayyad Conquest…. https://www.academia.edu/5751302 for a possible explanation for the seemingly unnecessary addition of al-Andalus).
These bilingual coins, struck in relatively good gold, have something important in common with the indiction series, which is the star form that is always prominently in the center of the reverse of both. A fact that has bewildered many generations of numismatist.The solution we now think was found long ago (more than a century ago!) by Antonio Delgado in an until very recently unpublished work (see: https://www.academia.edu/2326452 pg.56) were he logically argues that this prominent star, smack center of the coins,  is a “speaking image” for  Hesperidis, the star of the west (Venus) which was in classical Greek period progressively applied to western geographical regions till it finally became applied to the Iberian Peninsula. It seems logical that the Arab conquerors moving first across many of the Greek speaking provinces of the Roman/Byzantine empire would have naturally picked up the name Hesperia as one of the names for the Iberian Peninsula and in their first coins put the symbol as synonymous to Hispania and quickly after that, in the bilingual coinage, as also synonymous to the new name place "al-Andalus". So singularly these coins contain three “names” for the same geographical area (2). T.I توفيق ابراهيم

1-The earlier choice of Musa ibn Nusair’s of striking coins in Ifriquiya in the regional Byzantine style, in Latin, when the ‘arabization’ of coinage had been implemented by ´Abd al-Malik more than a decade earlier in 77H could be taken as an early sign of an attempted distancing from the central authority in Damascus. It was not a matter of lacking mint masters with the adequate knowledge of  Arabic script as he was striking dated copper coinage in Ifriquiya , fals, fully in Arabic from 91H onwards ( Walker P. 148).
2- One should take note that the bilingual coin has the peculiarity of having in Arabic only the second part of the accepted shahada, the  risala محمد رسول الله and not the obligatory لا اله الا الله . Nor does the basmala appear at the beginning the Arabic mint and date legend as is usual. I certainly do not think too much should be made out of this omission which was probably dictated by the limited space and the fact that that the term الله was central to the meaning of the risala text and must have sufficed making this seeming omission acceptable. Curiously the use of  محمد رسول الله  was a late comer to Islamic coinage and was not first introduced by the Umayyads but by the rebel anti-caliph Ibn Zubair and  became standard on coins only after that. But that obviously does not mean that it was not in oral or written use before that).

Since 1927 the Archeological and Ethnological Museum of Cordoba houses a large finding of dirhams from the Andalusian emirate of the Umayyads, of which there were general reports and some data, though these had yet to be completed and reviewed. The paper offers a general evaluation of the finding which is an important source for a comprehension of the coinage of the emirate up to the beggining of the 3rd century of the Hegira.

The Ethnic Situations in the Turkic Regions of Central Asia in the Pre-Mongol Epoch: According to the Muslim Sources of the 9th – 13th Centuries, edited by Professor Bori Ahmedov. – Bishkek, 1995. – 208 p., ill., map. (in Russian).
The monograph by Prof. Tyntchtykbek Chorotegin (Tchoroev), a Kyrgyz historian and orientalist (born 1959), is devoted to study history of the migrations of the Eastern Turkic groups (including the Kyrgyz and Uighur) and their ethnic situations in Central and Inner Asia and Siberia in the 9th – 13th centuries according to the medieval written Muslim (Arabic and other) sources of that time (the monograph was published in Russian language in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). The title in Russian: Etnicheskiye situatsii v tyurkskikh regionakh Tsentral'noi Azii domongol'skogo vremeni: Po musul'manskim istochnikam IX-XIII vv. / Nauchnyi red. Professor Bori Ahmedov. - Bishkek, 1995. – 208 s., ill., karty.

Muslim World has been upholding the Tawhidic concept of Ubudiyyah with a massive accumulation of knowledge over the entire period in which has spurred the rise of the great Islamic civilization. In presenting the concepts, Islamic sciences have been categorized the directions of its various aspects: theoretical as well as its practical application have been indicated.However, without meticulous and appropriate division of sources in Islamic sciences the combination of the theory and practical has failed to bring about the desired results. The Islamic sciences as presented currently do not commensurate with its magnitude, depth and brilliance as can be unveiled from the universe of Islamic Knowledge from a multitude of known sources in the Muslim World and elsewhere. The gigantic sources in Islamic sciences are books, film, journals, manuscripts and etc. need to be rearranged accordingly based on current requirement through re-paraphrasing the record or data collection. To upgrade th...