In the 6th century GC, then Grand Caliph Akbar ibn Fulan had a problem: the realm was running out of coins. No new coins had been minted since the fall of Oathkeep, as all of the silver mints (and mines) were in the north, which was now in the hands of barbarians, and the gold coins minted in Ascadia had a long road to travel to reach the now far-isolated capital of the Ahrimid lands. Saillonne had not minted coins of its own in centuries, and the Grand Caliph didn't want to admit that he didn't know anything about minting. So he commissioned the Guild of Jewelers to create a new coin: the Dinar.

Minted from 4.35 grams of pure gold, the Dinar was meant to replace the gold Aureus of Ascadian mint. Unlike the foreign coin, it would not be debased with lesser metals--it would be pure gold, and therefore superior. An error in the calculation (due to faulty metallurgical knowledge) of the purity of Ascadian gold led the minters to calculate the gold content of the Aureus at 4.35 grams, and so the new coin was made to be that weight exactly, as opposed to the 5g total weight of the Aureus, with its "inferior" metals. In fact, the Aureus contains 4.5g of pure gold, so the values of the coins was slightly off.

This difference was not lost on traders and merchants when using the new coin, and in practice, they refused to exchange the coins at a one-for-one rate. Several laws were passed, and rather unfortunate punishments meted out to those caught defying the Caliph's will, but the measures had little to no effect--the new coin was not being honored at the stated value, limiting its use. The Aureus could readily convert to 25 silver solidii, while the Dinar would be valued at 24 solidii and some uneven amount of change. The annoyance in using the new coin meant that many merchants melted down the new coins--pure as they were--and converted them into trade bars, to be valued by exact weight.

This angered the Grand Caliph, who outlawed the practice--and in fact all minting of bullion by private parties--calling the act "counterfeiting" and proscribing a punishment of death. Even this draconian measure did little to stop the embarassing defilement of his image in iron pots throughout the realm. Finally, his advisors counseled him to take a different tack. At tremendous cost, he purchased every Aureus he could, by offering a one-for-one exchange for Dinar; then, when the influx of coins waned, he outlawed the Aureus as a valid currency. Now, its mere use was a crime, and the only way to avoid it was to exchange the coins for Dinar. Reluctantly, the people did as commanded...although many Aureii would remain in circulation long after his edict.

Originally, he planned on melting down the Ascadian coins, using their gold content to keep minting Dinar. However, his moneyers had to admit that they did not know how to purify the coins to his specifications--regardless of effort, there would always be some impurity, and it would be measurable with commonly-available merchant's tools.

He was unwilling to endure such embarassment. In an effort to recoup his staggering losses, he commissioned a grand caravan to cross the Arianas, taking thousands of gold Aureii--in addition to other valuable goods--directly to Ascadia, where they could be honored at their original value, and traded for something of equal worth...perhaps gems, or maybe even silver--something the realm would need much of soon.

The first caravan made it to Ascadia, despite the tremendous dangers and many setbacks; after two years of travel, they returned with a fraction of the coins' worth in stamped, pure silver bullion. The loss would have been atrocious, if not offset so favorably by the profits of trading spices, dyes, and other goods of the desert for items dear and valued in Saillonne but plentiful in the east. Despite the losses--including much human life--the Grand Caliph declared it a success, and set to work topping his previous effort.

The first caravan had carried only a fraction of the royal hoard of Ascadian Aureii. This new caravan, ten times the size, would carry the entire bulk--estimated by modern scholars at anywhere from 200,000 to over a million gold coins--along with endless tons of goods from the Arianas and points even further afield from Ascadia. Surely, the return on the investment--a staggering one to say the least, in logistics alone, besides the cost of the goods and coins--would be a kingdom's wealth, the beginning of a new Golden Age.

That, of course, would assume the caravan ever actually arrived in Ascadia. With a kingdom's worth of gold, spices, dyes, and exotic goods. In fact, it never made it as far as Dennoth. Theories abound as to what became of them--the Ahrimin are frequently blamed, and some even accuse dragons of stealing the hoard and secreting it off to a cave somewhere--but far more exist to posit the continued existence of the hoard, of a kingdom's worth of gold hidden somewhere in the desert, to be found by the luckiest adventurer of all time.

For his part, Akbar was finally out of ideas. He bankrupted himself minting useless coins, then bought hundreds of thousands of truly valuable coins with them, only to cast them vainly into the desert. There was only one way to undo his shame: to find the lost treasure, and prove his wisdom. It was a futile gesture, but, to his credit, he personally led an expedition of brave (and foolish) adventurers, following in the tracks of the lost caravan. He was, of course, never seen or heard from again.

Basir ibn Akbar succeeded his father when the old man was declared to have been taken by the desert. His path was long and difficult, guiding the royal house out of crushing debt amidst a flagging economy. He spent decades making deals, working with nobles and business interests to settle the house's debts. 32 years of hard work and eating a lot of crow paid off, and when he died, he left the realm in far better shape than his father had.

One of the major early challenges of his reign involved the original crisis that prompted his father to act: the crippling coin shortage. The city was awash with gold, but the massive coins were all but useless in the vast majority of transactions. Most business was conducted using the ancient, increasingly debased and rapidly dwindling supply of silver solidii and denarii from the Auld Empire. With those coins in short supply, they necessarily yielded to foreign currencies and barter, which, while keeping the economy afloat, caused a significant dragging force in lost efficiency.

The realm needed new silver coins. Basir had a small stock of silver--not enough to fix the problem, but at least enough to mitigate it, perhaps long enough to find a new source of silver. He commissioned his moneyers to create a new silver coin, to take the place of the solidus. Like the Dinar, it would be pure, with none of the debasement so common in foreign currency.

Now, it is tempting to begin to doubt Basir's wisdom, as, like his father, he continues to insist on pure metals, despite the major disadvantages of excess malleability leading to shaving and clipping. Now, with silver, there is the additional disadvantage of corrosion--silver does not corrode quickly, but the coins were meant to last centuries, and the first batch would prove unequal to the task. However, Basir was as wise as he could be--the loss of the Auld Empire's knowledge (largely a cultural lashback against Artifice and related sciences, as the knowledge might otherwise have been easily preserved in Saillonne's massive libraries) meant that even the best alchemists of the land did not understand corrosion...they though tarnish of silver was due to impurity, and the only way to forfend it was to mint as pure a coin as possible.

As for clipping and shaving, the realm had standing laws about coin debasement--a merchant was obliged not to accept a coin that had any sign of clipping or shaving, and was in fact guilty of a crime if he did--but these laws had not been effective for the easily-clipped Dinar, and there was no reason to think they would be enough for the new Dirham. However, the Caliph finally got a lucky break--in a rare show, his moneyers actually came through with solid science.

Since the fiasco of the original Dinar, the moneyers had been seeking to perfect their newly-discovered craft, and they knew they needed to recover the lost knowledge of the Auld Empire--in particular, the knowledge of minting the high-quality, resilient, intricately-engraved coins that were now dwindling away--in order to meet the Caliph's demands. After entertaining countless charlatans claiming to have knowledge of advanced metalcraft, they finally hired some unscrupulous fellows to break into the great library of the Temple of Artifice and just steal what they were after. They were lucky enough to find the right information, and put it to good use.

For the dirham, there would be no compromise--this would be the finest coin ever produced. Each would be perfectly circular, its weight precise and exact, and the image of Basir would be rendered in exquisite detail never before seen on a coin. All this would be made possible by an ancient technique known as "milling"...a machine would be used carefully and precisely press the coins, rather than having someone manually hammer them.

As a bonus: the new coins would have a raised edge, making clipping obvious to the most oblivious merchants, and making shaving all but impossible, as it would deform the perfect, circular shape.

And so, the new Dirham was crafted...at first, only fifty thousand could be made of the pure silver bought from Ascadia.