Gold Coins of Abd al-Malik

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

The history of the world as told through one hundred of the objects that time has left behind. The objects are from the British Museum and tell the story of humanity over the past 2 million years. They are chosen by the museum's director, Neil MacGregor. This week he is exploring the world along and beyond the Silk Road in the 7th century AD at a time when the teachings of the prophet Muhammad were transforming the Middle East forever. Today he looks at how the Syrian capital Damascus was rapidly becoming the centre of a new Islamic empire. He tells the story through two gold coins that perfectly capture the moment - with contributions from the historian Hugh Kennedy and the anthropologist Madawi Al-Rasheed. Producer: Rebecca Stratford

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4. Almost every day a news broadcaster tells us that the world has just suddenly changed.
0:22.0	The hyperbole of 24-hour news coverage is littered with
0:25.2	cliches. Every day it seems the world is never going to be quite the same again.
0:30.3	But there have been moments in history when the world was indeed suddenly changed and the people
0:36.0	living at the time knew it. This was a new beginning.
0:45.0	I think it is a new beginning.
0:49.0	I think it is a way of imagining not only the past but the future.
0:55.0	What went on before wasn't really relevant.
0:58.0	This was a new dispensation.
1:01.0	A history of the world in a hundred objects. Gold coins of Abd al-Malic, minted at Damascus in Syria, between 696 and 697.
1:27.0	This series is a history told through things and this program is about two coins,
1:37.2	about what we would now call a currency change. But there are two coins that sum up
1:42.2	one of the greatest political upheavals ever,
1:45.0	the permanent transformation of the Middle East in the years following the death of the Prophet
1:48.8	Mohammed.
1:49.8	For Muslims, the clock of history was reset, when in 622 in the Christian calendar,
1:55.9	Mohammed and his followers moved from Mecca to Medina. That event, the Hedra,
2:01.0	became for Islam year one of an entirely new calendar.
2:05.0	For his followers, the Prophet's teachings had so transformed society that time had begun again.
2:11.0	The objects we'll encounter this week will show something of what the world looked
2:15.9	like at this particular moment. They were all made in the years around Muhammad's death in the
2:21.3	year Hidhra 11, 632 AD and we're traveling to China, England and Korea.
	...

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