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AL-Andalus – MAghreb. CIRculation of gold and silver for coinage in the Medieval Islamic West (8th-13th centuries)

The circulation of gold from sub-Saharan Africa to the shores of the Mediterranean has received particular attention from medievalists historians. Written sources, in particular the texts of Arab geographers, bear witness to the wealth of regions from which the gold used in Arabic coinage was from. However, it is difficult to estimate the extent of this use. Similarly, while the exploitation of silver mines has been documented in the Maghreb, the use of this production in the coinage of the Islamic West has few been measured. While the circulation of precious metals towards al-Andalus has essentially been studied on the basis of evidence relating to gold, it seems essential to include silver in order to understand the dynamics of the circulation of precious metals in the western Mediterranean basin. The ALMACIR project aims to establish a reference system for the composition of gold and silver coins alloys from the medieval Islamic West, using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Once the more than 700 dinars and dirhams submitted for analysis have been catalogued and entered into a database, the results will highlight the levels of trace elements, present as impurities in the ores and possible indicators of the origin of the metals. The objectives will be to assess the circulation of gold and silver and its evolution according to the changes in mint states, between the Arabic conquests in the West at the turn of the 7th-8th centuries and the fall of the Almohad dynasty in 1269. The study should thus shed light on trans-Saharan trade and metal production in West and North Africa, and renew the current vision of trans-Saharan trade and circulation networks between the Maġrib al-Aqsā and al-Andalus.