Excavation in Jerash uncovers Islamic-Period mint, insights into city's economics

AMMAN — Scholars involved in excavation of Jerash, ancient Gerasa, discovered an Islamic-period mint in the city. Copper coins were issued in both a pre-reform and post-reform series.

"This seemingly straightforward discovery, overlooked due to the close similarity of Jerash coin types to the much larger production from Baysan, marked a major step forward in the identification of a significant role for Jerash in Islamic times," said the professor Alan Walmsley from the Macquarie University in Australia.

The professor added that the minting of coins was an indication of wider administrative and geopolitical strategies, from which a comprehensive programme of urban development could be expected, and probably one compatible with the urban layout of Anjar. 

Jerash issued coins in the same style as the more prolific coppers of Baysan/Scythopolis as Baysan was an important Early Islamic town, with a hilltop governor’s madina. 

The pre—reform types follow the heavy fabric of the Justin II and Sophia Byzantine series, which was clearly very popular in the area well after their distribution and, thereafter, co-circulated with the first Umayyad issues. 

The preference for two figures on the obverse of the coppers may have led to a brief production at, or for, Jerash of an unusual "Double Standing Caliph" type often found there, Walmsley elaborated.

The professor added that the post reform issues are stylistically more regular, although still on the large size; a degree of coinage uniformity in Bilad Al Sham was not achieved until the end of the Umayyad period.

"Not entirely clear is why some of the district towns were authorised to issue coins and others not, while other issues had a non-urban attribution, but to some degree, it must indicate varying levels of administrative function, social rank, and group identities," the scholar said.

Taking into consideration the historical and numismatic material previously mentioned, and after fruitful discussions with Jordanian colleagues, who interpret this enigmatic coin as an accession issue of AD685 in which the two figures represent Abd Al Malik Ibn Marwan as caliph and his brother, Abd Al Aziz, as his designated successor.

“The Islamic Jerash Project sought to look beyond the mosque to set it within other urban features of Late Antiquity, such as streets, markets, baths, palaces, churches, and residential quarters,” Walmsley maintained.

The professor noted that it was never intended to simply excavate a mosque in isolation, unlike, in many cases, the earlier excavation of churches and Roman—period monuments at Jerash; rather, it set out to place the building within a wider urban context over the longue durée. 

"To achieve this goal, we had to not only investigate what was below the mosque but also what lay around it — that is to say horizontally — and to link both the ‘down’ and ‘around’ through stratigraphic and chronological comparisons," the professor said.

"The objective was to build a settlement profile for downtown Jerash that, through applying the principles of archaeological and architectural stratigraphy, spanned hundreds of years," Walmsley highlighted.

Talking about the souk during the Islamic period, the scholar emphasized a discovery of a row of shops along the eastern wall of the Phase-2 mosque, and in them a number of marble tablets with shopkeepers’ accounts in proficient Arabic, revealed the central role played by the mosque in the daily operation of the marketplace.

"From this, it became abundantly clear that the Jerash mosque had been deliberately situated at this location in the commercial heart of the town. This arrangement mirrored those known for other Early Islamic towns such as Damascus, Aleppo, Al Fustfit, and — somewhat later — Fatimid Cairo," Walmsley said.

The professor added that it was decided to investigate this area in more detail, as well as the mosque shops, a row of shops across the street (on the east side) were excavated.

"The changes at Jerash were sympathetic to the original urban plan and intensified commercial activity in the town centre; social and economic life continued to do well in Jordan after the arrival of Islam, whereas earlier opinions assumed general social and economic decline," Walmsley concluded.