We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
In the British Museum there is a gold coin issued by the Zanj rebels, hitherto inedited, and consequently of sufficient historical importance to warrant special publication. There is, so far as the present writer is aware, only one other coin (also in gold) surviving as a witness of that disastrous Slave Revolt which is estimated to have cost over 1,000,000 lives. This latter coin was published by Casanova in the Revue Numisrnatique (1893, pp. 510-516) and is now in the Paris Cabinet. By kind permission of the Conservateur I have been enabled to have it photographed. The mint, in both instances is the same, but the specimen in the British Museum is three years earlier in date, and preserves for us a more complete portion of the peculiar reverse marginal legend, that enables us to emend to a great extent the conjectural rendering suggested by Casanova in his article above mentioned.
page 652 note 1 In the Paris specimen the legend begins at the bottom.
page 652 note 2 This is no doubt the father of the false Mahdī, the Zanj leader, whose own name occurs on the reverse of the coin. This is in agreement with the statement of Tabari that the rebel put his own and his father's name on his banner.
page 652 note 3 Koran, ix, 112.
page 654 note 1 Based on Koran, iv, 76 : “Let those then fight in the Path of Ood who sell this present life for the next world”.
page 654 note 2 Usually curtailed to the first clause 
.
