Assalamu-alaykum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
1. Introduction
And then sold him [Joseph] for a small price, for a few pieces of silver [darhima maddatin]; so little did they value him. [Qur'an 12:20]
In the story of Yusuf (Joseph) in the Qur'an, the brothers of Joseph, in order to get rid of him, dropped Joseph into a well. However, Joseph was picked up by some travellers who came by. They hid Joseph like a piece of merchandise and sold him for a small price in Egypt. The Qur'an describes this transaction as darhima maddatin. However, according to the Christian missionary Joseph Smith, the use of dirham during the time of Joseph, as narrated in the Qur'an, is an anachronism.
In June 2005, as part of a series of conferences and workshops delivered to the evangelical European Leadership Forum in Sopron, Hungary, Smith along with fellow missionaries Keith Small and Andy Bannister as well as others, were responsible for cascading current methods, tactics and strategies for evangelizing Muslims at an international level. In one such lecture delivered to his fellow missionaries from various European countries, Smith discussed several alleged "exciting" errors in the Qur'an. Smith told his audience that the mention of the dirham in the story of Joseph in the Qur'an indicates that the Qur'an was being redacted long after it was finally revealed (according to the Muslims). He says [his statement is at time slice 30:48–32:58]:
... some of these are just exciting to use and you can just really play with your Muslims who bring these up or you can just take them to them and just question them and then say come back next week and come in with the answers. They're good to do that, because for many Muslims they have no idea that these problems exist in the Qur'an, and the paper we're gonna give you that's gonna be on the internet I've got about 30 or 40 of these errors up there you can pull them down, these are at least 10 that I have here that are the easiest ones to use.
Let me just give you an example of the dirham, the dirham, and this will move right into what Keith's gonna be saying later and that is the story of Joseph again which is that complete story that we're looking at when Joseph was sold to the Egyptians he was sold for a few dirham counted out. And you ask about dirham counted out you assume therefore you're using coins. You count out coins. You ask well did they have coins at the time of joseph? There were no coins. You come to the British museum we have a tour there of looking at all the biblical evidence, two hours looking at all the biblical evidence, the archaeological evidence, the Old Testament, from the Assyrian, the Babylonian and the Persian period, and we can show you in the coin, in the numismatic section where there are dirhams, but the fascinating thing is there are no coins prior to the seventh century BC. Coins didn't exist, it was bullion, it was weighted measure. Well, the Bible also makes the claim in Genesis, where do we have it here, Genesis 37:28 that Joseph was sold for 20 shekels. Shekels is not a coin it's a bullion. In fact we now know from the Mneusic(?) tablets that's about a price of a slave around that time period. So not only does the Bible get the right denomination, it also gets the right currency.
Lets go back to the dirham. Well maybe God was giving a revelation to Muhammad at the time and using a currency that they would have known at that time, so maybe the people who were living there in the seventh century AD used dirham's. Did they? No they didn't. The dirham was only created in 642. Umar(?) was the one that he introduced the dirham to replace the drachma. But Muhammad died in 632. So how could Muhammad have received a revelation using a coin that was yet to exist for another ten years? You got a problem don't you? It as if I were to ask you if I could buy that watch back in 1960 for 20 euros. You wouldn't know what I was talking back in 1960. Today you would but not in 1960. And here you got a difficulty. And immediately you can see what's going on. It looks like that this was a something that was put into the Qur'an much later.
Smith's argument can be summarized like this. Firstly, Joseph was sold to the Egyptians for a few dirhams, counted out. According to Smith, only coins are counted, and, there were no coins in the time of Joseph, it was bullion. Secondly, dirham was created only after the advent of Islam and it was Umar (d. 644 CE) who introduced the dirham to replace the drachma. Therefore, Prophet Muhammad (d. 632 CE) used the name of coin which did not exist for another ten years. In other words, the use of dirham in the Qur'anic account of Joseph is an anachronism.
Are Smith's analyses, assumptions and conclusions based on a sound understanding of the numismatic history of the ancient near east? In this paper, we would like to examine the claims of Smith concerning the dirham from the point of view of history and philology. We will also discuss the sale of Joseph in Egypt from the point of view of Egyptology to see if the ancient Egyptians did indeed use some form of silver for their transactions.
2. Dirham: A Historical & Philological Investigation
A discussion about ancient coinage involves some technical terms. Therefore, let us identify some key definitions. Firstly, the coin. Concerning the "coin" the Key Definitions In Numismatics says:
Coin: Piece of metal, marked with a device, issued by government authority and intended for use as money.[1]
The Seaby Coin Encyclopaedia defines "bullion" as:
Bullion: Uncoined metal, usually of gold and silver, in the shape of bars, plates, ingots or other regular forms.[2]
Armed with this information, let us discuss the issues surrounding the dirham, shekel and "coinage" in ancient Egypt. للمزيد من مواضيعي
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07.12.2012, 12:34
"Dirham" In The Time Of Joseph?
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