Seadet-i Ebediyye - Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle

Ahmad bin Alî Maqrîzî (d. 845) was not an Islamic scholar. He was
a historian harbouring Shiite views. It was therefore deemed
unsuitable to cover the so-called citations.] There were gold and
silver coins in Mekka before Islam. They weighed twice as heavy
as the coins used by the Muslims. Those coins were used also by
Rasûlullah ‘salla-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ and Hadrat Abû Bakr
‘radiy-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’anh’.
It is stated in ’Uyûn-ul-Besâir, in its section dealing with the
nisâb of zakât: “Formerly, there were three kinds of dirham. One
dirham of silver weighed twenty qirâts (carats) or twelve qirâts or
ten qirâts. They are called, respectively, ‘dirham of ten’, ‘dirham of
six’, and ‘dirham of five’. Hadrat ’Umar added up the qirâts of
these three dirhams together. Then, dividing the sum, forty-two,
by three, he made an average dirham that weighed fourteen qirâts.
This average dirham is called ‘dirham of seven’. For, the weight of
ten dirhams is equal to the weight of seven mithqâls. [One mithqâl
weighs twenty qirâts.] Formerly, dirhams, (drams) were in forms of
grains. According to widely-accepted information, the roundshaped
dirham that we know was first minted by Hadrat ’Umar.
The same information is written in Fatâwâ-i-zahîriyya, (written by
Qâdî Muhammad bin Ahmad Zahîr-ad-dîn Bukhârî, d. 619.) It is
stated as follows in the Mekka section of the book Mir’ât-ulharameyn:
“Gold and silver coins minted in certain weights are
called meshkûkât (numismatics). Gold coins are called dinârs and
silver coins are called dirhams. The oldest numismatics discovered
by archaeologists are coins minted by ancient Greek nations. In
the era of the Sahâba, numismatics inherited from the ancient
Arabs were used, along with unminted pieces of gold and silver,
which were being weighed and used. There were three different
dirhams with three different weights then. Hadrat ’Umar ‘radiy-
Allâhu ’anh’ unified them into one different dirham whose weight
was the average of the other three. Changing the weight of the
qirât as well, he announced that one qirât was one-fourteenth the
weight of a dirham, and that twenty qirâts would weigh one
mithqâl. In the twenty-eighth year of the Hijrat, Hadrat ’Uthmân
had gold and silver coins minted with this reckoning system in the
Hertek city of Taberistan.
“Most Islamic States minted various coins in their times.
During the early times of the Ottomans coins belonging to the
Seljukî Sultâns were in use. It was in 729 [1329 A.D.] when Orhân
Khan had the first Ottoman currency minted. Later, a variety of
coins were minted and various laws were enacted to regulate the
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