“The Emir of the Catholics”

1. Preliminary Considerations on ‘Cultural Appropriation’

The concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ originated in critical ‘Cultural Studies’ in the 1970s, where it served to analyse power imbalances and to uncover mechanisms of domination and oppression inherent in many processes of cultural exchange. About three decades later, the concept found its way also into pre-modern studies ^[2]. Here it was welcomed for its specific hermeneutical potentials: to a greater extent than other concepts, ‘cultural appropriation’ allowed to focus on the agency of the adopting side in cultural transfers and to highlight the creative performance in the act of ‘making one’s own’ a foreign cultural artefact ^[3]. Furthermore, more clearly than other approaches, the concept directed the view to power relations and inequalities between the parties involved as a relevant factor in the study of cultural exchange.

Since then, however, the concept has evolved and undergone a specific sharpening of meaning and perspectives. For one thing, ‘cultural appropriation’ has become a key term in societal controversies. The term has gained popularity as a veritable activistic ‘shibboleth’, used to denounce acts of ( racist ) discrimination and alleged ‘alienation’ of cultural property originally created and owned by marginalised communities ^[4]. But in academic discourse too, the concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ has experienced a constriction of focus and – in parts – an ideological charging ^[5]. Although contributions to the further development of the concept have come from a variety of scientific disciplines, most research on ‘cultural appropriation’ has so far centred on modern and postmodern scenarios. More specifically, the concept has been used predominantly to address the lasting effects of colonialism in contemporary societies. This focus entails specific perspectives and presuppositions. Several epoch-related features complicate the application of the concept in its currently predominant postcolonial understanding to other historical periods and must be overcome if ‘cultural appropriation’ is to be meaningfully used for the study of pre-modern phenomena. The following issues are of particular relevance in this respect:

Firstly, current concretions of the concept regularly work with categories, such as ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, or ‘indigeneity’, that do not capture adequately the constellations of cultural encounters in pre-modern periods, where group boundaries were rather marked by, e. g. creed, lineage, legal status, or language. Abandoning the time-related ( post- )colonial categories, however, means to lose also the supposedly unambiguous patterns of power imbalances associated with them. While in contemporary ‘Western’ contexts, labelling as ‘Black’ or ‘Native’ commonly connotes a marginalised status, relations of dominance and subordination between medieval cultural entities were by no means as clearly defined by default and must therefore be examined without bias in each individual case.

Secondly, in current discourse, ‘cultural appropriation’ is often conceptualised in terms and modes that are characteristic of modern capitalist consumer societies and representative political systems, respectively. The rights of disposal over cultural goods, for example, are conceived in categories of property law and copyrights ^[6], while the modes of illegitimate ‘misuse’ of foreign cultural artefacts are thought of in economic terms as ‘commodification’ ^[7], ‘consumption’ ^[8], or ‘exploitation’ ^[9] of foreign resources without permission or appropriate ( monetary ) compensation. Correspondingly, ‘silencing’ in public discourse and denial of cultural self-representation ^[10], as well as ‘non-recognition’ as full-fledged participants in, and equal contributors to societal and cultural processes, are considered the most serious harms suffered by ‘victims’ of ‘cultural appropriation’ ^[11]. Regarding medieval contexts, by contrast, it seems more proper to shift the focus from legal ‘ownership’, political ‘representation’, and economic ‘utilisation’ to a more semiotically informed perspective on ‘meaning’ and ‘interpretive authority’. Understood in this sense, ‘cultural appropriation’ may translate more generally to ( arbitrarily ) re-assigning significance to a cultural artefact taken from another community to make it serve the adopting party’s aims and interests.

Thirdly, ‘cultural appropriation’ has undergone an increase of moral charge, not only in recent activistic usage but also in substantial parts of the academic discourse ^[12]. Rooted in postcolonial theory, the concept aims to expose structures of discrimination and injustice resulting from power imbalances that underlie many scenarios of cultural exchange ^[13]. ‘Cultural appropriation’ is thus commonly defined one-sidedly as an act of domination ( or oppression ^[14] ) perpetrated by a dominant majority against a subordinate minority ^[15]. In this sense, the inequality of power relations ^[16] and the implicit violence inherent in the unauthorised taking of a foreign cultural good make ‘cultural appropriation’ in itself appear a morally reprehensible offence. Consequently, there is a consensus in much of the recent academic literature that ‘cultural appropriation’ is potentially or even in principle harmful and thus objectionable ^[17]. This moral bias, however, compromises the neutrality of the concept as an analytical tool, not least because the constellations of pre-modern cultural encounters often do not allow for a simple identification of ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’. Consequently, it seems reasonable not to restrict ‘cultural appropriation’ a priori solely to the supposedly dominant party, but to equally address adoptions of foreign cultural items by both sides involved. This does not suggest ignoring power inequalities in cultural takeovers, but to regard them as a formative, rather than essentially defining factor of ‘cultural appropriation’.

Fourthly, for reasons partly related to the concept’s popularity in recent controversies on identity politics ^[18], many current understandings of ‘cultural appropriation’ are based on essentialist models of a strict separation between the cultural communities involved in the respective transfers of artefacts ^[19]. This applies not only to the distinction between an originally ‘owning’ and an ‘appropriating’ culture, but also to various notions of what makes the usage of an adopted item allegedly ‘inappropriate’. Many recent approaches conceive of ‘cultural appropriation’ as an act of ‘alienation’ and define as illegitimate any use of adopted goods that either is unaware of or deliberately disregards their original meanings and significance ^[20]. Apart from sweepingly discrediting all creative reinterpretations and remodelling of adopted objects by the receiving community ^[21], this understanding implies a fundamental detachment of ‘appropriated’ items from their respective cultures of origin. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that ‘cultural appropriation’ does not usually erase all the original meanings and connotations of an adopted artefact. Rather, in most cases, the persisting knowledge about the item’s emergence from an alien culture forms a vital part of its re-assigned significance in the adopting community. ‘Appropriated’ cultural objects thus often function as transcultural signifiers that relate to the adopting community’s ideas about the Others and its relation to them. Instead of a supposed separation and detachment, ‘cultural appropriation’ rather seems to create specific entanglements of cultural orders and sign systems.

In the following, I will evaluate the proposed semiotically informed reading of ‘culturally appropriated’ artefacts as ‘transcultural signifiers’ in pre-modern settings of cultural entanglements on a specific source material: coinage. In addition to their monetary function as a means of payment, coins in pre-modern societies served as a medium of political mass communication and the representation of power ^[22]. The material tokens always referred symbolically to an immaterial dimension of meaning; thus, they were ‘signifiers’ par excellence. Of particular interest with respect to transcultural relations now are cases where historical emitters adopted models and symbolic codes of foreign coinage for their own issues and thus played on different readings of cultural signs. As a contact zone between Christian and Muslim societies, the medieval Iberian Peninsula offers some interesting examples.

2. A Numismatic Takeover: Alfonso VIII’s Golden Morabetinos and Their Islamic Model

Over the twelfth century, gold currency had become essential for Castilian trade and commerce. Remarkably though, Castile did not mint the necessary species itself but relied on foreign coins that had been flowing in in great quantities from Muslim-ruled al-Andalus since the second half of the eleventh century ^[23]. Initially, after the collapse of the Caliphate of Cordoba in 1031 CE, the weak Muslim petty kingdoms, known as Taifas, had filled the coffers of the Christian realms with their payments of protection money ( parias ) ^[24]. After the Almoravids had reunited al-Andalus in 1091 CE, these payments had stopped, but now trade and booty pumped enormous amounts of money from South to North. During this phase, the Almoravid dinar became the predominant gold currency all over the Western Mediterranean. Christian sources refer to these coins as ‘morabetinos’ or ‘maravedís’, both Romance derivations of the Almoravids’ self-denomination in Arabic, i. e. al-Murābiṭūn. While Almoravid rule declined in mid-twelfth century, the importance of the ‘morabetino’ survived.

The breakdown of Almoravid power in al-Andalus after 1143 CE led to a second era of petty kingdoms. Among the most prominent figures of this time was Ibn Mardanīš ^[25], or ‘Rey Lobo’ ( the ‘Wolf King’ ) as he was called in Christian sources. In 1146–1147 CE he seized power in Valencia and Murcia and quickly expanded his realm all over the Eastern part of al-Andalus ( Šarq al-Andalus ). Ibn Mardanīš’s rule was virtually built upon gold. Enormous payments, particularly to the kings of Castile and the counts of Barcelona, secured his emirate against the threat of Christian ‘reconquest’. At the same time, Ibn Mardanīš hired large Christian mercenary armies ^[26] to fight his Muslim rivals, the expanding Almohads. This double strategy was costly and caused a permanent need for money. Under Ibn Mardanīš, the mints in Valencia and Murcia constantly emitted enormous amounts of gold coins ^[27]. This coinage was exported on a large scale to the Christian realms in the Iberian North as well as beyond the Pyrenees to France and Italy ^[28]. Due to their high quality and almost ubiquitous availability, the ‘maravedís lopinos’, as they were named after Ibn Mardanīš’s vernacular sobriquet ‘Rey Lobo’, set the standard in the Christian territories, and became the currency of record for most financial transactions. There is rich documentation from Castile, Aragón ^[29], Navarre, or Barcelona ^[30], e. g. of property deals or grants of pensions, which were defined and transacted in this specific sort of coins ^[31]. However, when Ibn Mardanīš was defeated by an Almohad army in 1171 CE and died shortly thereafter, the steady supply of gold coins from Murcia to its northern neighbours dried up abruptly. It was probably not purely accidental that this sudden cessation of coin imports from Ibn Mardanīš’s emirate coincided with a breaking innovation in Castilian monetary history: in 1172 CE ^[32], after centuries of exclusive circulation of Andalusí dinars, Alfonso VIII began to issue gold coins in his own name.

It is commonly assumed that the new Castilian gold coinage was primarily introduced as a substitute for the now lacking dinars from Murcia ^[33]. Indeed, Alfonso obviously kept the appearance of these Islamic coins, just as they had been minted under Ibn Mardanīš. He kept not only the standard weight and alloy of the Murcian dinar ^[34] but stuck to the model also with respect to the type. His first morabetini preserved a typically Islamic, non-iconic design, consisting almost exclusively of epigraphic legends in Kufic Arabic script. At first glance, Alfonso’s earliest gold coins would hardly be distinguishable from the Islamic ‘maravedís lopinos’, were it not for a star and a cross on the obverse that marked his coins as Christian ^[35]. In a second phase from 1184 CE, the Latin letters ALF would appear as a further distinctive feature ^[36] ( figures 1 and 2 ).

However, as soon as one starts reading the Arabic legends, it becomes clear how deeply Alfonso changed the Islamic model in a particularly Christian way ^[37]. The inscriptions on Ibn Mardanīš’s gold coins changed several times during his rule ^[38]. None of the surviving exemplars can be shown to have served as the exact model for Alfonso’s imitations. Nevertheless, several striking parallels clearly link the Castilian morabetinos to the Murcian dinars ( figure 3 ). On the obverse, the ‘maravedís lopinos’ show a five- or six-line inscription respectively, starting with the Islamic šahādah ( “There is no god, but Allāh / Muḥammad is the messenger of Allāh” ). On some early coins this confessional formula is followed by a eulogy on the prophet ( “May God bless him and grant him peace” ) ^[39], which is omitted on later coins to provide space for further lines of text. The second part of the obverse’s legend names Ibn Mardanīš as the ruler ( amīr ) who emitted the coins. Here, variations appear with respect to the form of the personal name as well as accompanying religious formulas: on early coins, Ibn Mardanīš appears only with his ism and nasab as Muḥammad b. Saʿd ^[40], later inscriptions add his kunya Abū ʿAbd Allāh ^[41]. In 547 H / 1152–1153 CE, at a height of his ideological confrontation with the Almohads, Ibn Mardanīš introduced a reference to Sura 3:103 in order to propagate his righteousness and his caliph-like quality as upholder of the Islamic Ummah’s religious unity ^[42]; furthermore, he appended a pious plea for God’s support ( “May God strengthen him” ) to his name ^[43]. Finally, from 564 H / 1168–69 CE Ibn Mardanīš’s dinars also mention his eldest son Hilāl as his designated successor ^[44]. In contrast to the multiple reformulations of the central legend, the inscription along the margin of the coins’ obverse remained unchanged over the years. It invariably gives a Quranic quotation from Sura 3:85, which had already been common on Almoravid dinars: “Whoever seeks a way other than Islam, it will never be accepted from them, and in the Hereafter they will be among the losers.”

Figure 1:

Alfonso VIII of Castile, Maravedí Alfonsí, Toledo 1174 ( Images courtesy of Coins of al-Andalus, Tonegawa Collection: https://tonegawa.eea.csic.es/T-def/almoravids/c69.jpg ).

Figure 2:

Alfonso VIII of Castile, Morabetino, ALF-type, Toledo 1192 ( Images courtesy of https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Maravedi_Alfonso_VIII_Toledo.jpg ).

Figure 3:

Ibn Mardanīš, Dinar, Murcia 544 H / 1149–1150 CE ( Images courtesy of Coins of al-Andalus, Tonegawa Collection: https://tonegawa.eea.csic.es/T-def/almoravids/IMG_7623.JPG ).

While the obverse names Ibn Mardanīš as the factual emitter of the respective coin, the central legend on the reverse legitimises his local rulership by embedding it into the overarching order of the pan-Islamic caliphate. By demonstratively pledging allegiance to the Sunni caliphate of the Abbasids, Ibn Mardanīš opposed both the Almohad ideology ^[45] of the theocratic rule of a chosen Mahdī and his dynastic successors, as well as the rivalling messianic concept of the Fatimid imamate. However, in the first years of his minting ^[46], the coins issued by Ibn Mardanīš only bore a generic reference to an unspecified al-imām ʿAbd Allāh amīr al-muʾminīn ( “Imam ʿAbd Allāh, Commander of the Faithful” ), which here is to be understood not as a personal name but literally as a ‘servant of God’ ^[47]. A major change in this respect came about in 547 H / 1152 CE, when Ibn Mardanīš replaced the reference to the generic ʿAbd Allāh by the mention of a specific Abbasid caliph, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Muqtafī ^[48] ( r. 1136–1160 CE ), whose rule is explicitly marked as ‘divinely ordained’ ( li-amr Allāh ) ^[49]. In 557 H / 1162 CE, almost two years after al-Muqtafī had died in Baghdad, Ibn Mardanīš returned to naming the generic ʿAbd Allāh on his coins, but he now specified him expressly by the adjective ( or dynastic nisba ) al-ʿabbāsī ^[50]. The circular inscription along the margin, in turn, starts with the typical Bismillah ( “In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” ), and continues with technical information on where and when the respective coin had been minted ( e. g. “This dinar was struck in Murcia [ Valencia ] in the year [ … ]” ).

This was the model. What did Alfonso VIII make of it ^[51]? In the field of the obverse, Alfonso took Ibn Mardanīš’s place as the legal emitter of the coinage: he too is named in the typical Arabic form by ism and kunya as Alfunš b. Sanğuh ( “Alfonso, son of Sancho” ). Remarkable is his ruling title, “Commander of the Catholics” ( amīr al-qaṯuliqīn ), that alludes to the pan-Islamic caliphal authority rather than to the merely regional emirate that Ibn Mardanīš had claimed in his coins. The inscription on the obverse concludes with a two-line blessing formula for the ruler: “May God strengthen him and grant him victory” ( ayyada-hu ‘llāh wa-naṣṣara-hu ). While Ibn Mardanīš’s maravedís had underscored their Islamic character by presenting the šahādah formula, confessing the oneness of God and the prophethood of Muḥammad, Alfonso’s coins, in turn, invoke the Triune God of Christian orthodoxy. They do so, however, in an alternate position. It is in the margin of the reverse that one reads: “In the name of God and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the one God”, followed by a verse from the Gospel replacing the original’s Quranic quotation. Where the Islamic coins had announced that any other religion than Islam would lead to damnation ( Sura 3:85 ), the Christian maravedís now state “whoever believes and receives baptism shall be relieved” ( Mark 16:16 ). In the field of the reverse, Ibn Mardanīš’s original allegiance to the pan-Islamic authority of the Abbasid caliphs was replaced by a reference to its analogous Christian counterpart, i. e. the Roman papacy as ‘leader’ ( imām ) of the Christian church. Finally, the inscription on the margin of the obverse specifies the mint where the coins were struck as well as the year according to the Spanish Era. All surviving specimens of the Alfonsine maravedís were struck in Toledo. The city was the only one in the Castilian realm that held all the necessary resources to produce Islamic-style coins: on the one hand, an established mint, but above all a reservoir of experts from among the so-called ‘Mozarabic’ population who could read, write, and engrave Arabic script ^[52].

Alfonso’s choice of an explicitly ‘Islamicate’ design for his morabetinos was clearly a deliberate takeover of foreign cultural codes and symbols, which would lend prestige to his own coinage. However, he undertook a profound reformulation of the original Islamic coins’ message, meaning, and significance by ‘translating’ them culturally, politically, and religiously into Christian ones. Before discussing this ‘cultural translation’ ^[53] further, it seems useful to look at some other examples of imitative Islamic coinage issued by Christian rulers, which will serve as comparative material.

3. Comparative Cases: Further Christian Imitations of Islamic Coinage

Alfonso VIII was not the first to imitate foreign gold coins; he was not even the first Castilian ruler to issue Islamic-style dinars. From 1147 to 1156 CE, his grandfather Alfonso VII had temporarily ruled over the Muslim town of Baeza. During this decade, a mint located in the conquered city produced gold coins largely identical to the Almoravid dinar ^[54]. In most cases, one can deduce only from the date given on the consistently Islamic coins that they were struck under Christian rule. It is not clear whether Alfonso took over a functioning mint in the conquered city or rather built a new mint himself, for which he would in any case have had to rely on local Andalusí minters. Most likely, therefore, the moneyers working in Baeza under Christian rule simply continued to produce the very same sort of Islamic coins they had already been striking in Almoravid or Taifa mints before having been hired by the Castilians. At least in some coins, however, the Christian interlude has left explicit traces. A small number of dinars from this period bear the inscription “struck in Baeza according to the weight standard [ or fineness ] of Castile” ( ḍuriba haḏ[ ā ] al-dīnār bi-Bayasah bi-ʿiyār Qaštilyah ) ^[55] ( figure 4 ). The meaning of this phrase is not entirely clear, as there was not yet a defined Castilian standard for gold currency. Roma Valdés suggested that it might have referred to a slight adjustment of the coins’ weight in order to simplify their exchange ratio to the circulating Castilian silver currency ^[56]. The peculiar inscription appears only in coins issued during the first years of the Castilian overlordship; its sudden disappearance may have resulted from a political change: the Castilians probably withdrew from the city in 1149 CE and entrusted the government of Baeza to a Muslim vassal, Abū Marwān ^[57]. This, however, would even strengthen the impression that the Baeza maravedís struck under Alfonso VII were in fact genuine Islamic coins.

Figure 4:

Alfonso VII of Castile, Dinar, Baeza 545 H / 1150–1151 CE ( Images courtesy of Coins of al-Andalus, Tonegawa Collection: https://tonegawa.eea.csic.es/T-def/almoravids/c68.jpg ).

Figure 5:

Gold Mancuso of Bonnom ( Berenguer Ramón I ), Barcelona 1023–1024 CE ( = ANS 1944.100.1. ) ( Images courtesy of the American Numismatic Society: http://numismatics.org/collection/1959.86.1 ).

A second example are the so-called ‘mancusos’ ^[58], which the counts of Barcelona issued for several decades throughout the eleventh century ^[59] until these coins were in their turn supplanted by the Almoravid dinars. The first known exemplar of this coinage dates to 1018 CE or shortly after ^[60]. It resembles a gold dinar struck in 407 or 408 H / 1016–1018 CE by the North-African mint of Ceuta ( Madīna Sabta ) in the name of the Berber ruler ʿAlī b. Ḥammūd ^[61]. In the turmoil that ultimately led to the collapse of Umayyad rule in al-Andalus, ʿAlī b. Ḥammūd seized control of Córdoba in 1016 CE and usurped the title of caliph, only to be killed shortly afterwards in 1018 CE ^[62]. The gold coin in question has his name with the full caliphal title on the reverse, in the field of the obverse appears the Islamic confession of the one God ( “There is no God but Allāh alone, he has no partner” ). The poor epigraphic quality of the Arabic inscriptions, however, shows the coin to be a non-Muslim imitation. After his death, ʿAlī b. Ḥammūd was succeeded by two further members of his family, al-Qāṣim and Yaḥyā al-Muʿtalī, whose names and caliphal titles also appear on Barcelonese mancusos struck until 1035 CE. However, these latter coins are no longer replicas of the Ḥammūdid originals but are clearly distinguished by a bilingual legend giving the name of the ( Jewish ) moneyer ‘Bon( n )om’ in Latin script. Furthermore, at least one series from 414 H / 1023–1024 CE expressly mentions Barcelona as the place of minting, thus making explicit that the coins were struck in a city under Christian rule ^[63] ( figure 5 ).

It is disputed whether the coins bearing Bon( n )om’s name were official issues of the reigning counts or whether they were of a private nature. If the emission of the mancusos was the private endeavour of specialised artisans ^[64], it probably lacked any political dimension. In fact, previous research has generally explained the Catalan reproduction of Islamic gold dinars in terms of purely economic needs. It was generally assumed that the upheavals in al-Andalus from 1009 CE had interrupted the influx of gold coins on which the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian north had become dependent. The new Barcelonese mancusos were therefore generally seen as a substitute for the supposedly dwindling supply of Andalusí coins ^[65]. However, this idea has been questioned with good reasons. Contrary to prior assumptions, the quantities of Islamic gold coins that flew into the domestic economies of the Christian realms during the final crisis of the Umayyad caliphate did not decline but rather even increased ^[66]. The striving factions in the Andalusí civil war heavily drew on Christian military support to fight their respective rivals and paid for this with copious amounts of coined money. To all appearances, therefore, there was no shortage of gold coins in Barcelona around 1018 CE. Moreover, if the new Barcelonese mancusos would have been merely a substitute to the established Umayyad dinars, why then would they imitate the coinage of a rival caliphal dynasty that had seized power only recently and – more importantly – against which Count Ramón Borell had still been fighting fiercely in 1016 CE?

In view of such inconsistencies, Almudena Ariza Armada has most recently argued in favour of the official character of the Barcelona mancusos, linking their emergence to the political rather than the monetary realities of the time ^[67]. Since the middle of the tenth century, the counts of Barcelona – like other Catalan rulers – had sought an alliance with the caliphate of Córdoba; de facto, the Catalan counts had thus become ‘vassals’ of the Umayyads. This strategic orientation towards the south had played a decisive role in Catalonia’s emancipation from Gallo-Frankish domination in the 980s CE; it had outlasted the period of ʿĀmirid attacks, and finally embroiled the Catalan counts in the factional struggles for the caliphate: from 1010 CE, count Ramón Borrell ( r. 992–1017 CE ) had been fighting on the side of an Umayyad legitimist party ^[68]. In 1016 CE, however, the Berber Ḥammūdids seized power in Córdoba. The counts of Barcelona had to adjust to these changed political conditions, especially since Ramón Borell’s death in early 1017 CE left the county with an under-aged successor: until 1023 CE, Ermesinda reigned for her minor son Berenguer Ramón I ( r. 1017–1035 CE ). As Ariza Armada intriguingly suggests, minting in the name of the now ruling Ḥammūdid caliphs may thus have not been an act of Catalan self-empowerment vis-à-vis a slowly fading Islamic dominance, but rather a demonstrative recognition of the Ḥammūdid claim to power. In fact, Andalusí rulers of that period not only granted their clients and vassals the right to mint coinage in the name of their caliphate but rather demanded them to do so as a visible sign of allegiance ^[69]. This interpretation suggests that the Islamic-style mancusos of Barcelona were not an example of appropriation, with Christian actors arbitrarily exploiting Islamic numismatic models to serve their own ( monetary ) needs and interests. Rather, Counts Ramón Borell ^[70] and Berenguer Ramón may have issued these gold coins in the name and at the behest of their new Ḥammūdid overlords ^[71]. Only a generation later – long after the fall of the caliphate and the end of Ḥammūdid rule in al-Andalus – first mancusos were struck in Barcelona that bore the name and title of the ruling Christian count Ramón Berenguer ( r. 1035–1076 CE ) in Latin script ( RAIMVNDVS COMES ). Though still roughly imitating a dinar struck in the name of the third Ḥammūdid caliph, Yaḥyā al-Muʿtalī, the dies now were cut by engravers apparently unfamiliar with the Arabic script; moreover, the coins are heavily debased to only half of the original’s weight ^[72].

Figure 6:

Offa of Mercia, Mancusus ( Dinar ), 8^th century, British Museum object no. 1913,1213.1. ( Images courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum [ licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 ]: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1913-1213-1 ).

The bilingual legends link the later Barcelonese gold coins to a third example: the unique ‘mancusus’ of King Offa of Mercia, minted in or shortly after 786 CE ^[73] ( figure 6 ). The coin, of which only one specimen is known, imitates an Abbasid dinar, struck in 157 H / 773–774 CE under the rule of caliph al-Manṣūr ( r. 754–775 CE ). Offa commissioned a die cutter ( who obviously was not familiar with Arabic script ) to fully reproduce the Islamic coin’s type, including the proclamation of Muḥammad’s prophethood, and then to insert his own name and royal title in Latin script in the field of the reverse. Notably, Offa did not have extant Islamic dinars countermarked ^[74] but had struck new ones with a bilingual legend, thus demonstratively making the coinage his own. Two features of Offa’s dinar require explanation: first, why did Offa have a gold coin minted, while trade and commerce in his own realm as well as in neighbouring areas were almost exclusively based on silver currency ^[75]? Second, why did he choose an Islamic coin to imitate? The only surviving exemplar of this peculiar coinage is commonly thought to have been originally found in Rome ^[76]. This fact possibly links the coin to a pious donation made by Offa to the papacy in 786 CE ^[77]. Papal letters of that period suggest that the king had vowed to send 365 mancusi to Rome every year to feed the poor and light the churches in the Eternal City ^[78]. The term ‘mancusus’, used in this context, did not necessarily refer to a specific sort of coins but more probably indicated a certain value or metal weight ^[79]. Nonetheless, Offa apparently had a special sort of hybrid coins struck to fulfil his obligation. The fact that he chose to copy an Islamic gold dinar was certainly due to the high esteem that this sort of currency enjoyed throughout the Mediterranean at that time. However, he did not simply reproduce this model but deliberately changed its appearance by inscribing his own name and title on it. He thus exploited the high prestige of the Islamic coin to enhance his own symbolic capital as a powerful and prosperous ruler ^[80].

Given the presumed historical context of the only surviving specimen, Offa’s dinar has often been referred to as a “ceremonial coin” ^[81], i. e. a coin minted not for circulation as regular currency but to present a diplomatic gift in a particularly prestigious form. In 2004, however, Lutz Ilisch showed that at the same time royal mints in the Eastern part of the Carolingian Empire produced copious amounts of imitative Islamic dinars that were obviously meant to circulate ^[82]. Around twenty-five such imitations have been identified so far; judging from the variety of dies, though, Ilisch assumes mintage numbers of several hundreds of thousands of pieces ^[83]. Remarkably, most of these Carolingian imitations reproduce the same Abbasid dinar of 157 H, after which also Offa had his golden mancusus modelled. However, there are two crucial differences between Offa’s coin and the Carolingian ones: firstly, Offa marked his mancusus as his own issue by visibly modifying the original type. His gold coin did not pretend to be an original Islamic dinar ^[84]. This is different with the Carolingian coins: they lack any deliberate marking of their imitative character and were obviously intended to pass unnoticed as genuine Islamic coins. The second difference is in the weight and fineness of the two coinages: while the mancusus of Offa has nearly the weight and alloy of the Islamic original ^[85], the Carolingian coins are all significantly underweight and have a much lower fineness, effectively containing about twenty percent less fine gold than the standard dinars. Some imitations turn out to be gilded silver or even copper ^[86]. This points to different aims of the two coinages: Offa obviously wanted to demonstrate that he was able to issue gold coins that were as good as the renowned Islamic dinars; his mancusi were thus intended to enhance his reputation as a ruler and as a true son of Saint Peter. The Carolingian gold coins, by contrast, must be considered forgeries, pretending a value they did not have.

4. The ‘Maravedís Alfonsinos’ against the Horizon of Christian Imitative Coinage

The foregoing examples stand for a variety of rather different scenarios, constellations, and motifs underlying potential monetary ‘appropriations’. In all the cases discussed, Christian rulers issued Islamic-style coins in order to ‘exploit’ the symbolism of prestigious Muslim coinage for their own purposes. The visual ‘Islamicness’ of their issues either guaranteed the acceptance of the coins, attributed to the reputation of their emitters, or conveyed the intended message of affiliation and loyalty. In no case, however, did the utilisation of Islamic numismatic patterns happen ‘unaware or in disregard’ of their respective original contexts and meanings. Right the contrary was true: all imitative coins intentionally played on the positive associations linked to the trusted and highly esteemed Muslim gold currencies.

To what extent did the imitators deliberately assign new significance to the appropriated coins? In the case of the Carolingian counterfeit money, any visible alteration of the Islamic coins’ outer appearance would have been downright counterproductive; the fake dinars were probably meant to pass unrecognised as originals. With Alfonso VII’s Baeza dinars, too, a shift in meaning is hardly recognisable: Alfonso kept the Almoravid coins’ appearance largely unchanged, neither did he translate them into new contexts of usage. One could even speculate that the indication of a diverging coin weight in the inscription was not ordered by Alfonso, but rather goes back to the Arab moneyers, who marked the coins as inferior for those who could read Arabic. Count Berenguer Ramón of Barcelona, in turn, seems to have played basically according to Cordoban rules when he first issued mancusos; his emission of imitative dinars did not detach the coins from the political sign system of the caliphate. Such a decontextualisation took place only a generation later in the bilingual mancusos issued after 1035 CE. With these coins, however, Count Ramón Berenguer actually continued his father’s minting rather than appropriating anew foreign Islamic coinage. It was only King Offa who clearly re-defined the meaning of his imitated mancusus. Although basically keeping the Islamic model, Offa marked the coin as his own issue and thus made it propagate his royal reputation. Apparently, this message was directed not only to his subjects in Anglo-Saxon Mercia but also to addressees abroad such as the Roman papacy. Of all the cases considered, therefore, Offa’s use of Islamic numismatic forms and codes seems to come closest to ‘appropriation’.

The examples discussed, however, do not correspond to the standardised patterns of power relations presupposed by current understandings of ‘cultural appropriation’: none of the presented emitters of imitative Islamic coins was in a dominant position vis-à-vis the Muslim societies, from which they adopted the numismatic forms and standards for their respective issues; neither, however, can they be regarded as ‘dominated’ or ‘oppressed’ by the Muslim side. The parties involved in the cases examined here did not encounter each other within the same polity but interacted as sovereign powers across external borders. Subordination and superiority therefore did not manifest themselves in forms of ‘discrimination’ or ‘marginalisation’ within societies, but in political, economic, and military power relations between realms and empires. Nevertheless, these power relations are important for the assessment of the scenarios analysed. Of all coin emitters, certainly Alfonso VII of Castile was in the most powerful position vis-à-vis his Muslim opposites, at least temporarily, having gained control of the Baeza mint between 1147–1156 CE by forceful conquest. However, Alfonso simply continued to have struck essentially Almoravid coins, which hardly show any traces of active Christian interference. The issuing of his ‘morabetinos’ therefore hardly constituted a deliberate gesture of Christian dominance. The Catalan counts of Barcelona, by contrast, were in a rather weak position when they first started issuing Islamic-style coins around 1018 CE. In the throes of a domestic succession crisis, they had just lost their long-standing Umayyad allies and now had to come to terms with a new caliphal dynasty in Córdoba, which they had still been fighting against only shortly before. Re-orientating their allegiance and minting Ḥammūdid dinars as a sign of subordination may have been a way to cope with the radically changed political circumstances. However, the counts kept issuing their Islamic-style coins long after the power of the Caliphate of al-Andalus had faded; apparently, they felt no need to discard the coins as a supposed sign of political inferiority at the first opportunity. Finally, Offa of Mercia as well as the eighth-century Carolingian minters had no regular contact whatsoever with the Abbasid Empire whose coins they were copying. Their imitative coinage was therefore not related directly to the political or military balance of power between Christianity and Islam at the time; nevertheless, issuing ( or forging ) Islamic-style coins was in itself a tacit recognition of the unrivalled prestige and undisputed economic dominance of the Abbasid dinar.

None of the scenarios discussed exactly resembles the case of Alfonso VIII’s ‘Islamicate’ dinars with their deliberately Christianised message. However, they direct the view to various questions that also need to be addressed with respect to the ‘maravedís alfonsinos’. Why did Alfonso VIII start to issue his own gold coinage at all? It is commonly assumed that the Castilian king introduced his morabetinos to compensate for a supposedly growing shortage of Islamic dinars ^[87]. This interpretation, however, disregards the origin of the raw material necessary for the minting: where did the gold for the ‘maravedís alfonsinos’ come from? Castile had no relevant gold mining itself ^[88]. The gold that reached the Iberian Peninsula during the high Middle Ages was almost exclusively of Sub-Saharan origin and was traded along routes controlled by the North-African Berber empires of the Almoravids and Almohads, respectively ^[89]. In the Christian realms of the Iberian North, this gold would usually arrive in the form of coined money. With high probability, Alfonso obtained a substantial part of the raw material for his morabetinos by melting down Islamic coins ^[90]. At first glance, therefore, the emission of the Alfonsine maravedís would result in a zero-sum-game without increasing the volume of gold currency in circulation. Moreover, the Mardanīšī dinars from Murcia had been the standard gold currency in Castile for decades. Why should Alfonso have suddenly decided to replace the well-established Islamic coins with new ones? In fact, the gold currency circulating on the Iberian Peninsula underwent a radical change at the very moment when Alfonso started minting his morabetinos. Ibn Mardanīš had been the last Muslim ruler of al-Andalus to issue coins according to the traditional Almoravid model. The Almohads, who firmly established their rule over all of al-Andalus in 1171 CE, introduced a new form of dinars that starkly differed from their rivals’ coinage in both type and weight ^[91]. Even users unable to read the Arabic legends would recognise the difference at once. Probably, so, Alfonso started to issue morabetinos himself not for a general shortage of gold coins, but to keep the trusted ( Almoravid ) dinar as the monetary standard in his realm.

This might explain why Alfonso preserved the weight and fineness of the Murcian dinars in his own gold coins, but it does not account for their peculiar type. Alfonso could have well given his morabetinos a distinctly Latin-Christian appearance, as the kings of León and Portugal would do only a few years later. They too began to issue morabetinos according to the Almoravid standard. Their coins, however, bear monolingual inscriptions in Latin and show pictorial representations of the ruler, heraldic lions, buildings, coats of arms, or crosses, as was common on the silver coinage of the respective Christian realms ^[92] ( figures 7 and 8 ). Alfonso of Castile, instead, chose a design close to the Islamic original. He certainly did so to ensure the acceptance of his coins. For this purpose, however, he could have simply issued the well-known Mardanīšī coins himself ( in immobilised form ), similar to what his grandfather Alfonso VII had done two decades earlier at the Baeza mint. For his Castilian subjects and their Latin-Christian trading partners, the visual ‘Islamicness’ of the coins would have been sufficient to evoke the intended impression of high quality and trustworthiness. Nevertheless, Alfonso decided to change the political and religious message conveyed by the coins’ legends. Apparently, it was the symbolic power of the coinage rather than its pragmatic function as currency that motivated this intervention.

Figure 7:

Fernando II of León, Maravedí, León 1157–1188, Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España, Madrid. Inv. 1994/104/1. Foto: Gemma Obén Tolosa.

Figure 8:

Sancho I of Portugal, Morabitino, 1185–1211, Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen, object no. 182 05684 ( Images courtesy of Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz [ license CC BY-SA 4.0 ]: https://ikmk.smb.museum/object?id=182 05684 ).

Alfonso too exploited the high esteem of established Islamic coinage to enhance his own royal prestige. Like King Offa of Mercia, Alfonso marked his maravedís as his own issues by inscribing his name and title. However, while Offa targeted Latin-reading addressees, Alfonso chose the Arabic script and language to propagate his political as well as religious programme. Who could have been the intended audience of this propagandistic communication? Only very few of Alfonso’s own subjects would have been able to understand the Arabic legends. Most of them probably lived in or around Toledo – the centre of Castilian Mozarabism – where Alfonso’s morabetinos were minted. Like all other inhabitants of Castile, however, the Mozarabic community was accustomed to Islamic gold coins and would hardly have demanded the Christianisation of their Arabic inscriptions. Was it the Arabic-speaking population of al-Andalus that Alfonso had in mind when he translated the original Islamic message of the maravedí coins into a Christian one ^[93]? Indeed, beside domestic circulation, the gold coins were vital for Castile’s trade with al-Andalus. Alfonso could thus reasonably expect his dinars to also reach the Muslim-ruled south of the Iberian Peninsula. At first glance, the use of coinage to propagate a religious-political message in a foreign language could be reminiscent of another supposed parallel case in Iberian coinage history: when the Muslims conquered the peninsula in 711 CE, they briefly issued a golden solidus, based on Byzantine models, on which the abbreviated Islamic šahādah appeared in Latin letters: IN N( omine ) D( omi )NI NO( n ) D( eu )S N( i )S( i ) D( eu )S S( o )L( u )S N( o )N S( ocius ) ^[94] ( figure 9 ). However, the differences are obvious: in 711 CE, addressing the Latin-Christian population of al-Andalus in their own language was a first step to set up Muslim rule over the recently conquered territory. Alfonso, by contrast, would have addressed a cultural and religious community living beyond the reach of his factual rule. Why should he have done so?

Figure 9:

Transitional Dinar, al-Andalus, 93 H / 712–713 CE ( Images courtesy of Coins of al-Andalus, Tonegawa Collection: https://tonegawa.eea.csic.es/T-def/coins/IMG_9100.JPG ).

It is difficult to imagine that he designed his coins as an instrument for a religious missionary campaign among the Muslim inhabitants of the neighbouring realm ^[95]. Nevertheless, issuing coins that demonstratively proclaimed the superiority of the Christian faith and Castilian rule in Arabic was a strong political statement and a claim to the imperial-like quality of his kingship. Such hegemonic aspirations found their expression also in titles like rex Hispanie or rex Hispaniorum, which Alfonso used in his charters particularly during the early 1170s, i. e. precisely at the time when he adopted the ‘imperial’ gesture of minting gold coins ^[96]. Following the tradition of Alfonso VII, such titles laid claim to authority over the entire Peninsula and all its inhabitants ^[97]. In the early 1170s, this message may have been primarily directed against Alfonso’s main Christian rival, Fernando II of León, but it was also perceived on the Muslim side: in his ‘Complete History’, the thirteenth-century chronicler Ibn al-Aṯīr inserted a letter, certainly made-up, from Alfonso to the Almohad caliph Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūr that depicts Alfonso on the eve of the battle of Alarcos in 1195 CE boasting about his expectation to extend his rule over the “two religions” and the “two peoples” of Hispania ^[98].

Did Alfonso’s adoption of Islamic coinage constitute a gesture of dominance? If so, towards whom? As Abigail Krasner-Balbale has pointed out, by imitating the dinars of Ibn Mardanīš, Alfonso was not arbitrarily usurping the emblems of a foreign enemy or marginalised minority but continuing the minting of a loyal vassal with whom the Castilian kings had maintained friendly relations until his death in 1172 CE ^[99]. Striking the ‘maravedís alfonsinos’ after the Murcian model can therefore hardly be seen as a confrontational gesture towards the original ‘owners’ of this currency, but rather as an expression of appreciation – not necessarily of the former ally’s person but of the reputation and reliability of his coinage, which had been normal currency in Castile for decades. Nevertheless, Alfonso began issuing his maravedís at a time when the power balances on the Iberian Peninsula were just about to change. The death of Ibn Mardanīš in 1172 CE and the collapse of his emirate swept away the bulwark that had hitherto shielded Castile from Almohad aggression. Alfonso’s realm was now directly exposed to Muslim attacks, as he would painfully learn already in the summer of 1172 CE when the Almohads launched their first campaign against a Christian territory and besieged the Castilian frontier town of Huete ^[100]. For the next forty years to come, the Almohads would pose a permanent threat to Alfonso and his kingdom. By modelling the inscriptions on his gold coins after the ‘maravedís lopinos’, Alfonso incidentally adopted a propagandistic programme that directly opposed the Almohad claim to power and countered Almohad ‘Mahdism’ with the Sunnite concept of the caliphal ‘Imamate’. It is questionable, however, whether Alfonso was cognizant of the specific meaning of the individual terms and formulas within the internal Islamic discourse on political theology, when he transformed them into the Christian message on his coins. Rather, he probably adopted them unknowingly, without referring specifically to the Almohad doctrine. His maravedís proclaimed the primacy of Christianity and Christian rule over Islam in general. Nevertheless, in 1172 CE this propagandistic message was not yet an expression of the programmatic crusading ideology that was to become the veritable ‘leitmotif’ of Alfonso’s royal self-representation from the 1180s. During the first half of the 1170s, Alfonso’s main concern was still to secure his kingdom against neighbouring Christian rivals ^[101]. It was not until 1177 CE that he began to mobilise systematically Castilian forces against the Muslim south “in the defence of Christendom” ^[102].

5. Concluding Remarks

Alfonso imitated Islamic numismatic models for his own gold coinage. On the one hand, he did this for pragmatic reasons, to ensure that his morabetinos would be accepted as a full substitute for the Murcian dinars, which had served as the normal currency in Castile for decades. However, Alfonso did not stop at simply replicating the established Islamic coins; he expressly made the dinars ‘his own’ by inscribing his name and title on them. Although this is clearly a case of an ‘unauthorised’ cultural takeover, it is, however, difficult to capture this example in the standardised models of ‘cultural appropriation’ in their currently prevailing postcolonial understanding. The constellation of parties involved was much more complex than the insinuated dichotomy between a ‘usurper’ and an ‘expropriated’ side. Alfonso borrowed the basic forms of his coinage from his late ally Ibn Mardanīš, used the coins to assert an imperial quality to his rule over Christian rivals, and propagated the hegemony of the Christian faith over the expanding Almohads. None of these constellations was characterised by clear dominance over a minoritised or marginalised counterpart. Although Alfonso made his coins convey a new political and religious message, different from the Islamic dinars, he did not detach his morabetinos from their original symbolic code system. On the contrary, he deliberately used the prestigious patterns of Islamic coinage to lend weight to his own political and religious message, which he wanted to be understood by both Christians and Muslims. At the same time, however, Alfonso’s coins testify to a creative reassignment of meaning and significance. Alfonso not only ‘appropriated’ the cultural signs of the other side, but profoundly transformed them through ‘cultural translation’, making them part of his own, Christian symbolic repertoire.