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0200 Cathay and the way thither : vol.2
中国および中国への道 : vol.2
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doi: 10.20676/00000042
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440   IBN BATUTA'S TRAVELS IN BENGAL AND CHINA.

ascertain from authentic records that these Tankas were of the silver currency of the day, in which was amalgamated a great deal of alloy, so that each Tanka only exchanged for sixteen copper pice," making, says Briggs, the tanka worth only about fourpence instead of two shillings (Briggs's Firishta, i, 410).

I doubt however if this statement, or at least the accuracy of the Bakshi's researches, can be relied on, for the distinct and concurring testimonies of Ibn Batuta and the Masc,lak-al-Absdr not only lend no countenance to this depreciation, but seem on the other hand greatly to enhance the value of the Tangah beyond what we may call its normal value of two shillings.

Thus Ibn Batuta tells us repeatedly that the gold Tangah (of 10 silver dinars or Tangahs) was equal to 2T gold dinars of Maghrib (see i, 293; ii, 65, 66 ; iii, 107, 426 ; iv, 212). The d1asGlak-al-Absccr says it was equal to three mithcals (ordinary dinars ?). The former says again that the silver dinar of India was equivalent to eight dirhems, and that " this dirhem was absolutely equivalent to the dirhem of silver" (iv, 210).

The Masdlak-al-Absdr also tells us, on the authority of a certain Shaikh Mubarak who had been in India at the court of M. Tughlak, that the

silver Tangah was equal to eight dirhems called hashtkclnI, and that these were of the same weight as the dirhem of Egypt and Syria (o. c. xiii, 211) ; though in another passage the same work gives the value as six dirhems only (p. 194).

The only estimate I can find of a Barbary dinar is Amari's report from actual weight and assay of the value of the dinar called Micmini of the

African dynasty Almohadi, current at the end of the twelfth century.

This amounts to fr. 16.36 or 12s. 11.42d. (Diplomi Arabi del R. Archiv. Florent. p. 398). We have seen that ten silver dinars of India were equal

to two and a half gold dinars of Barbary, or, in other words, that four of the former were equal to one of the latter. Taking the valuation just given we should have the Indian silver dinar or Tangah worth 3s. 2.855d. ...(A).

Then as regards the dirhem. The dinar of the Arabs was a perpetuation of the golden solidus of Constantine, which appears to have borne

the name of denarius in the eastern provinces, and it preserved for many

hundred years the weight and intrinsic value of the Roman coin, though in the fourteenth century the dinar of Egypt and Syria had certainly

fallen below this. The dirhem more vaguely represented the drachma, or rather the Roman (silver) denarius, to which the former name was applied in the Greek provinces (see Castiglione, Monete Cufiche, lxi, seqq.)

The dinar was divided originally into 20 dirhems, though at certain times and places it came to be divided into only 12, 13, or 10. In Egypt,

in Ibn Batuta's time, according to his own statement, it was divided into

25 dirhems. His contemporary, Pegolotti, also says that 23 to 25 diremi went to the Bizant or dinar. In Syria in the following century we find Uzzano to state that the dinar was worth thirty dirhems; and perhaps this may have been the case in Egypt at an earlier date. For Frescobaldi (1384) tells us that the claremo was of the value of a Venice grosso (of