Introducing, Dirham Aceh - One of the gold coin from ancient time

CISAH
Center for Information of Samudra Pasai Heritage


What will come to your mind, when you find a piece of gold on the street or in the bushes?!

Honestly, I've never been looking for anything valuable in that way.

However, in the expedition that I did with the team @cisah in doing research to find for the existence of historic objects that left by the era of the Samudra Pasai kingdom, I have found a piece of dirham gold.

Dirhams are a name of a currency that is dumped for gold coins, which are ordered at the time of the Sultanate of Samudra Pasai. It's not easy to find the coins, because today, the remains of debris from kingdom era are almost no more. Except for buildings/objects that have been saved by the government to serve as tourist attractions.

I was with the team on a motorcycle with the team to get to the hills and valleys in the hinterland. And there, we tried to find and document the various objects we found.



Rocky road conditions in the oil palm plantation area

Yesterday, we arrived at a palm plantation, which became a landscape along the rocky road we crossed. Perhaps now it is a palm plantation, but in ancient times, here is the location of densely populated settlements. Evident from the building debris and ceramic fragments that exist on the surface of the land, there.



Soil condition after rain, a dirham piece lying there just like that

A spatter of rain had made the piece of gold visible. If in dry weather, the dirham pieces will be covered by sand or dust. The rain has brought back the sparkle of gold color so it's clearly visible to the naked eye.

In addition to above ground level, dirhams are also at the most under it, due to long periods of time, the ages have increased the soil surface, may have been due to human labor, or only by time. We did not dig the ground to get a lot of dirhams, because we did not have any other support tools, such as gold/metal detectors.


Dirham size

When looking at the first picture, you must think that this dirham has a large size, in fact, this dirham only has a size less than half an inch, but the material is pure gold. And has a selling price of $80 per chip. Really a currency that has a high value.

Dirhams currency that exists in Aceh, according to historians, have been made since the 12th century BC, or about 800 years ago.

Two sides of the coin

Like most other coins, this dirham currency also has two sides, face, and back. The difference is that on dirham coins there is no inscription of a human head or other painting, which is only written in Arabic script, which is written:

  1. Front Side
    "Sultan Al-Adil"

  2. Back Side
    "Muhammad Malik Adz-Dzhahir"

"Sultan Al'Adil" means "The Just King" is a title for a king, while"Muhammad Malik Adzhahir"is the name of the king.

History is a high value to be protected, I will not sell this coin to collectors or buyers, because I want to keep it until later. So far, @cisah is still doing research on history, you can click that account to see more results.


Thanks for watching and reading this post. If you like it, please comment, upvote and resteem


BY: STEEMVEST17

Original Post & Design | January 2018


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