The dirham or dirhem was a coin of pure silver weighing 2.97 grammes, and worth one-tenth of a dinar. It was minted both in North Africa and in Central Asia under various dynasties. It was standard cu...
The city of Florence stood in the centre of the squalls and sun-shafts of late medieval Italy. Nurtured on the wool of its beautiful Apennine contado, it grew in the thirteenth century into a thriving...
NOMISMA, MEANING ‘COIN’, was used by both Greeks and Romans. Our own word ‘money’ derives, via the French monnaie, from the Latin moneta, meaning the mint, where coins are struck. (In early Rome the m...
We have survived the Death of God and the Death of Man. We will surely survive the Death of History . . . and the death of post-modernism.
The difference between a referendum and a plebiscite is a fine one. Both pertain to collective decisions made by the direct vote of all qualified adults. The referendum, which derives from Swiss pract...
The debased coinage of his reign bore his initials, ICR: Iohannes Casimirus Rex. These were taken to stand for Initium Calamitatum Reipublicae, the Beginning of the Republic’s Catastrophes.
The big question about the hunter-gatherers, therefore, does not seem to be ‘How did they progress towards the higher level of an agricultural and politicised society?’ but ‘What persuaded them to aba...
The Muslim Era of Hegira, which marks the flight of the Prophet from Mecca, corresponds to Friday, 16 July AD 622.
That the United Kingdom will collapse is a foregone conclusion. Sooner or later, all states do collapse, and ramshackle, asymmetric dynastic amalgamations are more vulnerable than cohesive nation-stat...
O dearest Warsaw of my youth, Which encompassed the whole of my world! If only for a moment and in the dark I wish to catch a glimpse Of the ashes and the flowers Of that good past.10