March 01, 2004

King Offa  was a Muslim. The old English King, famous for his dyke, adopted Islam in the eigth century. Oh no he didn't. Nothing about it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anyway. But it is remarkable that the first gold coin the English ever minted bears a clear profession of the Islamic faith.
posted by Plegmund 20 years ago
  • Good post. From the hoax link: If his coins had been in order to declare his faith in Allah to the people of his realm, he would surely have written the Muslim creed in a language which his subjects could have understood Not necessarily - the Bible wasn't written in English until the early 1600's (1603-1611).
  • Great post - Nice to know that I learned something today. Wikipedia has a good article about King Offa's life and reign to provide a bit more background.
  • Actually, Bibles were available in English considerably earlier than that: the Wycliffe Bibles are credited as the first. Of course, it did get him a messy end for his troubles.
  • I want to hear more about his famous dyke...
  • It was long and stony.
  • I was surprised to read somewhere recently that early consignments of the Bible in English were actually seized and burnt. I know they didn't want it translated, but burn the Bible?!
  • Many historians now believe that medieval English people (as well as French, etc) actually understood more latin than had been thought, and many other devotional books were published in English even before the reformation. The Lord's Prayer was translated into Old English. The mostly likely explanation is that from the hoax debunking myth - that the coin was copied from existing Muslim coins, without knowledge of how to read Arabic. More on Offa of Mercia (757-796) [1, 2] and early English coins in general [1, 2]