Thursday, December 22, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
The earliest such coins were clearly copied from older Judean coins that featured the Temple menorah, with a seven branched menorah clearly visible. Here's an astonishing example that also includes a six pointed star on the other side, although Muslims also used that star in various motifs.
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But soon they morphed to a different styled menorah, although the menorah was still associated with Jerusalem.
This one says on the obverse, "Aliya, Madinet Bayit al-Maqdis" - meaning Aelia Capitolina, the Roman name for Jerusalem, and "City of the Holy Temple."
There were two main differences between the original Jewish style menorah and the one that Muslims started putting on their coins. The Jewish representations of menorahs during the Byzantine period on medals and mosaics had seven branches and a three legged base:
The new Muslim "menorahs," though, while still associated with Jerusalem, changed the base to 2 legs, the number of branches to 5, and they put a line across the top of the menorah.
At the time, some Muslim coins used "visual puns" where a different picture would be seen upside down than right side up. Back in 2013, I mentioned that coin collectors had noted that the upside down version of the Muslim menorah resembles the Dome of the Rock, with the two-pronged Islamic crescent on top.
Another dome-like coin:
Once you see it upside down, it's hard to think it is a coincidence. After all, what kind of candelabra has a solid bar across its cups?
This could account for the changes to the menorah appearance to look more dome-like.
A few years after my post, some Israeli researchers came to the same conclusion, which was debated in certain circles. But a new proof for the upside down theory came from the discovery of an important inscription that was found in Nuba, near Hebron, in 2016:
A team of archaeologists revealed the existence of a 1000-year-old text, dated to the beginning of the Islamic era, which indicates that the Muslims perceived the Dome of the Rock as a reestablishment of the earlier Jewish Temple. They referred to it as “Bayt al-maqdis” in the inscription, which derives from the biblical Hebrew terminology as ‘Beit Hamikdash’, known as the Hebrew reference to the Holy Temple.
Turning the coins upside down could easily symbolize replacing the Jewish Temple, represented by the menorah, with the Dome of the Rock where early Muslims performed their own Temple-like rituals - and called it the "Bayt al-Maqdis," a term that later on started referring to all of Jerusalem.
Whatever the intent of the early Muslims were, though, the menorah on their Jerusalem coins proves that they associated Jerusalem with Jews and the Temple - both of which Palestinians deny today.
They are also trying to turn Jerusalem's history upside down.
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