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Art. IV.—Unpublished Glass Weights and Measures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Edward Thomas Rogers
Affiliation:
Cairo

Extract

In a paper published in the Numismatic Chronicle (1873, Part I. page 60), I enumerated and described all the glass discs with Kufic inscriptions which had till then come under my notice; comprising those in my own cabinet, M. Sauvaire's collection, and others in the possession of the Rev. Greville Chester. I then advanced my reasons for believing that these discs were standard coin-weights. The theory that they were tokens, or equivalents of coins, had been supported by several learned writers; but all those students and collectors with whom I have since been in communication now recognize them as weights.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1877

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References

page 99 note 1 vol. ii. p. 249.

page 100 note 1 The weight here referred to has happily passed into our National Collection, and I have had the satisfaction of examining it in the Medal room at the British Museum. I can thus testify to the accuracy of the engraving in Pietraszewski's ‘Tabulæ Numorum,’ and to the inaccuracy of his reading and description.

page 102 note 1 I am desirous of correcting an error, into which I was not unnaturally led by an imperfection in the die, in my reading of the inscription on a glass weight, No. 37, in my paper published in the Num. Chron., 1873, p. 67.Google Scholar I diffidently read on the imperfect die but this, from subsequent comparison and analogy, I am glad now to be able to interpret as the large fils. The Numismatic Department of the British Museum possesses two duplicates of this weight. The functionary, Al-Kásim-ibn-'Ubaid-Allah, by whose authority it was issued, was probably the minister of that name who was appointed on his father's death in A.H. 288 as his successor in the post of Wazír by the Knalífah Al-Mu'taḍid, and who died in A.H. 295.