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Four 1,000-year-previous Gold Coins Unearthed Near Jerusalem’s Western Wall
The uncommon discovery at an Israel Antiquities Authority dig sheds mild on the historic and political shifts between the traditional Muslim dynasties ruling the town
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Four gold coins have been lately found inside a pottery jar discovered throughout an excavation within the Western Wall Plaza of Jerusalem’s Old City. The valuable 1,000-year-previous coins mirror the political and historic shift of energy between the 2 Muslim dynasties that dominated the town on the time.
The small container, or juglet, was found by inspector Yevgenia Kapil of the Israel Antiquities Authority about two months in the past, throughout preliminary digging as a part of a plan by the Jewish Quarter Development Corporation to construct an elevator facilitating entry to the plaza from the Jewish Quarter. Last month, archaeologist David Gellman, director of the excavation, emptied out the dust contained in the juglet and found 4 gold coins in wonderful situation.
Robert Kool, the antiquities authority’s coin skilled, examined them and decided that they dated from the late 940s by means of 970s C.E., the early Islamist period. Two of the coins are gold dinars that have been minted in Ramle beneath the rule of the Caliph Al-Muti’ (946-974) and his regional governor, Abu ‛Ali al-Qasim ibn al-Ihshid Unujur (946-961 C.E.). The different two coins have been minted in Cairo by the Fatimid rulers al-Mu‘izz (953-975 C.E.) and his successor, al-‘Aziz (975-996 C.E.).
“The profile of the coins discovered within the juglet are a near excellent reflection of the historic occasions. This was a time of radical political change, when management over Eretz Israel handed from the Sunni Abbasid caliphate, whose capital was Baghdad, Iraq, into the arms of its Shiite rivals – the Fatimid dynasty of North Africa,” Dr. Kool explains.
“Four dinars was a considerable sum of money for most of the population, who lived under difficult conditions at the time. It was equal to the monthly salary of a minor official, or four months’ salary for a common laborer,” he says, including that for members of the elite in these days, nonetheless, it was a comparatively small sum.
“The small handful of wealthy officials and merchants in the city earned huge salaries and amassed vast wealth. A senior treasury official could earn 7,000 gold dinars a month, and also receive additional incomes from his rural estates amounting to hundreds of thousands of gold dinars a year.”
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