2023 - Islamic coins: more than money
Sara Ann Knutson was awarded the Barakat Postgraduate and Early Career Award to study how Islamic coins were used as more than just money.
After a doctorate showing how Islamic coins reveal the cross-cultural interaction between Abbasid and the surrounding European, African, and Asian societies, Sara Ann undertook this project to show how coins meant more than just finance in the MENA region, and still do.
She studied the engagement modern people have with the coins of their culture’s past, examining how they transmit cultural value as well as monetary value. As a case study, she studied Amazigh communities in Morocco and their creation of jewellery. Rather than melting down coins to reuse their silver in custom pieces, they instead add the coins whole to the jewellery, using them as displayers of cultural value.


















