Follis in the name of William II

Gold coins, and to a lesser extent silver immediately draw the interest and envy of those who observe or collect them. However, it’s by studying bronze coins that we can understand the links which existed between coins and the men who used them in their daily lives. Sicilian tari, the gold coins of Norman sovereigns have been the subject of many studies while follari, bronze coins (from the Latin follis) have oven been neglected. However, we can observe very many types of bronze, mainly minted in Salerno and Messina, which display Latin writing, Arab titles and Christian or antique iconography.

Messina was a Norman workshop: from the Fatimid period, we only know of one issuance of kharrube, silver coins which were fractions of the dirham. The Normans reorganised their monetary workshop and minted tari then follari. Under William II (r. 1166-1189), the workshop of Messina even rivalled the Palermo one and confiscated fiduciary coin minting for the island.

Bronze coins of the Messina lion type are quite common, however they do not seem to be encountered in southern Italy. They were probably minted under William II on the occasion of a reorganisation of the monetary system required by the reduction in the volume of silver metal available. There are two types of lion coin: wider and heavier coins (10.22 g on average) have on the back a palm tree with five open branches covered with dates, with no inscription; smaller coins (2.07 g on average) carry an inscription which designates William II in Arabic simply as al-Malik (“the King”), equivalent to the Latin title Rex. On gold coins, he is also designated by the Arab title al-Musta‘izz bi-llâh “conqueror by the grace of God”. The size and weight of lion coins were perhaps chosen to make up for the lack of silver.

It is suitable here to mention the Artuquid and Zangid coinage of Turcoman sovereigns from the north of Syria and Mesopotamia, contemporary to Norman mints in Sicily. In fact, their bronze coins have characteristics in common with the lion type coins: they are heavy with wide diameters; the fields are minted with figurative representations inspired by antique and byzantine iconographies (nikè, gorgons, emperors, eagles); all the sovereigns are designated by the title al-Malik; finally, these coins were designated by the term dirham. The coexistence of these iconographic motifs suggests that the minting of Norman coins and Turcoman coins came from the same approach: the explicit desire of the ruler to use an ancient heroic imagery which reinforces the idea of sovereignty itself. The lion, classic symbol of strength, is often used by the Normans of Sicily (from the two lions of the mantle of Roger II to those which support the tombs of Norman sovereigns). Maybe William II deliberately tried to set himself aside from the Byzantine follis which were used until then as models for the Sicilian bronzes.

Furthermore, diverse examples of Norman bronzes were found in the Near East, in particular in the ancient territories of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, in Acre, Caesarea, and Tyr, as well as to Alep, which gives evidence both of the existence of trade exchanges between Sicily and the Levant and the distribution of these coins accross a relatively vast space.