Medieval Coins: Gold, Silver and Cash, 500–1500

When the Western Roman Empire fell apart, the gold coin it left behind kept going in the east. Constantine's solidus, about 4.5 g of nearly pure gold, held that standard in Byzantium until the 11th century. Merchants from Ireland to India knew it.

In the late 7th century the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik reformed Islamic coinage. His gold dinars and silver dirhams carried only inscriptions, with no portraits, and that style lasted for centuries across the Islamic world.

Western Europe mostly ran on silver. For hundreds of years its everyday coin was the silver penny, the denier or pfennig. For anything bigger, people counted out a lot of pennies. That changed in 1252, when Florence struck the florin, about 3.5 g of gold that barely changed for nearly 300 years. Venice followed with the ducat, and much of Europe copied both.

In the east, the Tang dynasty introduced the Kaiyuan Tongbao in 621. It became the model for Chinese cash coins for over a thousand years. Japan imported Chinese coins in such quantity that they became its everyday money.

The articles below follow each of these coin families.