Since Islamic coins characteristically bear no images, they have ample room for inscriptions; a typical coin of the Classical Period bears 50 to 100 words in a total area (obverse plus reverse) of about 10 cm2. Each coin is thus a small document bearing several explicit messages which its makers intended to convey. But inscriptions, like other features of a coin, also carry implicit information unconsciously provided by the makers. Analysis of orthography, grammatical constructions, phraseology, and epigraphical style can illuminate the evolution of the Arabic language and script; the comparative study of titulature brings out changes in the self-image and philosophy of government of rulers; religious inscriptions on coins show what their issuers regarded as fundamental, as opposed to the beliefs attributed to them by hostile or later writers. Such topics must, of course, be studied in the context of the evidence from literature and monumental inscriptions. Coins have the advantage that their evidence is usually firmly dated and placed—and undoubtedly official—although one must beware of the strongly conservative tendency of coin design: inscriptions and designs may reflect traditional practice rather than current attitudes.

It may be surprising that there is so much to say about a period that is supposed to be poor in sources. The impression of a lack of primary and reliable secondary sources for the first century of Islam has been created by the issue of the usability of Arabic literary materials that are admittedly secondary. Indeed, the authenticity of the entire Arabic literary corpus, when it deals with matters in the first century and one-half of Islam, has been undermined by the skepticism of Western scholars based on its internal contradictions, on the partisan biases of the transmitters, on the anachronous projections of later issues and legal theories back to an earlier period, on the fictional and legendary quality of its anecdotal elements, and on assumptions about the nature of oral composition and transmission. Such criticism has led to a rather late dating of the use of writing for literature and of the use of the isnād especially associated with the Schacht thesis, as well as to views that saw Islamic historical composition originating in commentaries on the Qur’ān and poetry.

The field of colonial Algerian history, once a sparring ground for colonialists and nationalists, is now experiencing a new sort of division, one derived from the contrasting intellectual traditions, Arabic and French, which meet in Algeria. Scholars of both these traditions have sought to “decolonize” Algerian history, to understand it from the point of view of the Algerian Muslim. Both approaches have made significant contributions to our understanding of colonial Algeria. Yet they have a shortcoming: both were originally developed in dealing with historical environments quite different from colonial Algeria. Thus, they face serious problems of adaptation.