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The Diner Versus the Ducat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Jere L. Bacharach
Jere L. Bacharach
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
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Extract

Since the Second World War, United States currency has been accepted in almost every country in the world, and in many locations the ‘George Washington’ dollar has been in greater demand than local monies. In ancient, medieval and modern times, other currencies have had a similar success. Examples of this phenomenon are the ancient Athenian silver ‘owl’, the Byzantine gold solidus, the Florentine gold florin, and the Maria Theresa silver taler. In the late fourteenth century A.D. the florin was replaced by the gold coin of Venice, the ducat, as the ‘dollar of the Middle Ages’; that is, the international currency par excellence. The position of the ducat was associated with the international trading position of Venice as well as the fact that ‘the Venetian ducato, which was first coined in 1284, kept both its weight and fineness remarkably intact up to the end of the Venetian Republic’. The ducat's domination of the Eastern Mediterranean money market led to the appearance of a series of imitations, including Islamic imitations which were produced in response to the introduction of ducats into the internal economy of Mamluk Egypt. All the accounts based on Arabic sources date the domination of the ducat in the Mamluk market from a.h. 801/a.d. 1399. These same sources describe the various attempts by Mamluk sultans to meet the challenge of the ducat by coining imitations. Their efforts culminated in the ashrafî, first issued in 829/1425, which successfully replaced the ducat as the principal gold currency of the Mamluk Empire until the Ottoman conquest of 922/1517.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , January 1973 , pp. 77 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

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page 89 note 2 An isolated reference for the year 830/1427 indicates that the ashrafî was worth about 214 trade dirhams or 97 per cent of the value of the ducat; this would accurately reflect the difference in weight (gold content) between the two coins (Sulûk, vol. 4, p. 555). Dr Balog discovered two harja-style dinars from the reign of Barsbây for the years a.h. 829 and 830 (Balog, p. 398).Google Scholar

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