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This paper is an attempt to understand the imagery of an important early Islamic silver coin that belongs to the so-called series of transitional coinage, issued in the period ah 72–77 (691–697), during the reign of {Abd al-Malik b. Marwan. As Michael Bates’s fundamental article on early Islamic coinage showed, this five-year period, which immediately preceded the introduction of nonfigural epigraphic coinage in ah 77–79, witnessed an extraordinarily rapid process of monetary change throughout the early Marwanid state, and especially in Syria, the metropolitan province.1 Whereas in the reign of Mu{awiya and his two successors the precious metal coinage of Islamic Syria had largely followed patterns established by Byzantine practice, after {Abd al-Malik’s defeat of the Zubayrids the capital mint at Damascus produced several novel figural types. These included the “Shahada” solidus (ah 72?) (fig. 1a) and the Standing Caliph dinar (ah 74–77) (fig. 1b), both gold, and the Damascus ArabSasanian drachm (ah 72–74) (fig. 2a), the Standing Caliph drachm (ah 75) (fig. 2b), and the Mihrab and {Anaza drachm (ah 75?–77?) (fig. 2c), all silver.2 Of all these coins, it is the Mihrab and {Anaza drachm that has been most studied by Islamic art historians since its first publication half a century ago. My purpose is to reexamine Miles’s analysis of the iconography of the type in the light of several new specimens that have become available since his day and to analyze the methodologies that he and his successors have deployed in their search to uncover the meaning of the early figural coinage.3 Over half a century ago, George Miles published a unique silver coin in the collection of the American Numismatic Society, which he identified as one of the transitional types struck by {Abd al-Malik b. Marwan in the mid-70s ah (mid-690s). The coin attracted his attention because it differed from the ordinary format of the Arab-Sasanian drachm in both the details of the obverse bust and the unique reverse image, from which Miles derived the name “Mihrab and {Anaza” (hereafter MA), by which the type has been known ever since (see below, for an illustrated catalogue).4 While Miles did not have a great deal to say about the obverse image, which he read as a crude and unsuccessful portrait of the caliph, he was obviously intrigued by the complex reverse image, which John Walker, his counterpart in the British Museum, had several years before interpreted as a rendition of the mihrab and lance.5 Miles added a further dimension to Walker’s brief catalogue description by identifying the upright structure between the two columns of the mihrab as the Prophet’s {anaza, or spear. Miles’s paper appeared in a memorial volume for the great German archeologist, Ernst Herzfeld. The choice of subject could hardly have been more appropriate for its dedicatee. Among his many and various contributions to Islamic archeology, Herzfeld had been responsible for publishing the Khassaki mihrab of Baghdad, which he claimed was the earliest surviving example of the mi¥r ̧b mujawwaf, or niche mihrab.6 Miles’s description of his coin as “a very valuable little archaeological document” shows that he wished it to be seen as a part of the archeological record, even though, as he freely acknowledged in his paper, the coin had no provenance beyond having belonged to a private collector, E. T. Newell, before its arrival in the collection of the A.N.S.7 Miles’s theory was that the numismatic image of the mihrab must have been introduced after the full-size mihrab had been established as a standard element of mosque architecture, because the numismatic image would only have been comprehensible to a coin user who was already familiar with it. The coin therefore provided the earliest secure date for the introduction of the mosque mihrab. This was the first contribution that the numismatic argument offered, but it was not the only one. Miles also suggested, in a more tentative vein, that the two-dimensional numismatic image may have been intended to represent the three-dimensional form of the niche mihrab (mi¥r ̧b mujawwaf). LUKE TREADWELL

“MIHRAB AND ‘ANAZA” OR “SACRUM AND SPEAR”? A RECONSIDERATION OF AN EARLY MARWANID SILVER DRACHM