Fāṭimid glass Jetons in Ismailia museum collection

Abstract EN

This paper deals with five glass-Jetons on display in Ismailia Museum in Egypt, ^[i] dating back to the Fatimid period, I studied, examined, and photographed them after extracting all the required documents from the Museum administration and the Egyptian ministry of Tourism and Archaeology.

The glass jetons were used in the Islamic era to calibrate the weights of money or coins, where each jeton was prepared to measure the weight of different currencies such as dinars and dirhams and their categories, there was a double dinar weight category, and the legitimate weight of the dinar was 4.25 grams and the weight of the dirham was 2.975 grams in order to ensure the safety of the weight and not to manipulate the currencies.

Traders and sellers were receiving jetons from Dar Al-ʿAyyar, which is supervised by the al-Mūḥtasib or his deputy, where the official jeton is inspected and weighed, and the cones with wrong weights were destroyed, the jeton is a reflection of the economic situation and its weight is ensured because it is linked to commercial and financial transactions and the rights of the seller and buyer are preserved, sellers were punished for cheating the weights of the glass Jetons because of the resulting disruption of the economic system. The reason for making jetons from glass was due to its nature as it is not affected by moisture or dehydration, its weight remains unchanged since the official jeton was inspected.

This contribution aims to discussing, analysing, and presenting the unpublished five Fāṭimid Glass Jetons from the collection of Ismailia Museum.

[i] The Museum collection contains another glass jetons, kept in its Wearhouse, the five ones under study are on display for visitors, in the showcase of the collection of Greco-Roman and Islamic coins.