THE HISTORY OF THE ISLAMIC DINAR AND DIRHAM

In the beginning the Muslims used gold and silver by weight and
the dinar and dirhams that they used were made by the
Persians. The first dated coins that can be assigned to the
Muslims are copies of silver dirhams of the Sasanian Yezdigird
III, struck during the Khalifate of Uthman, radiallahu anhu.
These coins differ from the original ones in that an Arabic
inscription is found in the obverse margins, normally reading
"in the Name of Allah". Since then the writing in Arabic of the
Name of Allah and parts of Qur'an on the coins became a
custom in all mintings made by Muslims.

Under what was known as the coin standard of the Khalif Umar
Ibn al-Khattab, the weight of 10 dirhams was equivalent to 7
dinars (mithqals)

In the year 75 (695 CE) the Khalif Abdalmalik ordered Al-
Haddjadj to mint the first dirhams, thus he established officially
the standard of Umar Ibn al-Khattab.

In the next year he ordered the dirhams to be minted in all the
regions of the Dar-al-Islam. He ordered that the coins be
stamped with the sentence: "Allah is Unique, Allah is Eternal".

He ordered the removal of human figures and animals from the
coins and that they be replaced with letters. Gold and silver
coins remained official currency until the fall of the Khalifate.
Since then, dozens of different paper currencies were made in
each of the new post-colonial national states created from the
dismemberment of Dar al-Islam. This command was then
carried on throughout all the history of Islam. The dinar and the
dirham were both round, and the writing was stamped in
concentric circles. Typically on one side it was written the
"tahlil" and the "tahmid", that is, "la ilaha illah Allah" and
"alhamdulillah"; and on the other side was written the name of
the Amir and the date. Later on it became common to introduce
the blessings on the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa salem, and
sometimes, ayats of the Qur'an.