If Jesus Himself, on one occasion, said, "Show me a penny," and preached a
sermon from it, surely we may follow his example and learn something from
these strange coins which you see in the pictures at the beginning and end
of this chapter. The coin on this page comes from Oman, the home of the
Arabian camel and one of its most fertile provinces. Perhaps some of the
boys and girls can tell where Oman is and give its boundaries without
looking in the geography, but I am sure none of you can read the
inscription on the penny, and tell what it all means. Who is Fessul bin
Turkee? What is an Imam? How much is one-quarter of an Anna? And when did
this queer coin come fresh from the mint?
[Illustration: OMAN COIN.]
Let us begin at the beginning. Fessul bin Turkee, the present ruler of
Oman, lives in a large, tumble-down old castle in Muscat, and his big red
flag waves over the town every Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath. He is not
much better nor worse than his father, Turkee, or than other rulers in
Arabia, but he certainly is far more enterprising, and is generally liked
by the Arabs of Muscat. He is not however in all respects a merciful
ruler. When I visited Muscat a few years ago this petty king had a real
lion's den, like Nebuchadnezzar, and the story goes that he sometimes used
it in the same way to get rid of his enemies. He once had a steam-launch,
and even put up an electric light on the top of his castle, but both of
these modern improvements came to grief. He also started a small ice
factory to supply his household with cold water when the thermometer rises
to over one hundred degrees; but the expense was too great and so the
project melted away likewise. His last venture is more successful, and
ever since the ice factory added a P to its sign-board and became a "pice
factory," copper coins have been plentiful in Oman. A _pice_ is the Indian
name for a small copper coin, and the Arabs borrowed the word, with many
other words, from the Hindu traders. The Sultan has plenty of wives and
horses and retainers; his castle is well-supplied with old cannon and
modern rifles; huge coffee-pots pour out cheap hospitality every day; but
withal I do not think he is very happy, for he is in debt and his power is
not as extensive as it was once. Fessul's proper title is not Sultan,
although he is often so called, but _Imam_, which signifies religious
leader. It is the old title given to the political chiefs of Oman and
Zanzibar.
The word means one "who stands before," and was first used as a title for
the leader of prayer in the mosques. In Oman the religious chiefs soon
took hold of politics, and so the title has a significance now in this
part of Arabia that it never had elsewhere.
Let us get back to the penny. Its face (although being a Mohammedan coin
it really has no human _face_ because their religion forbids pictures)
bears an English as well as an Arabic inscription. The opposite side only
has the Sultan's name in Arabic. On the side that has the English words is
the legend: "Struck at Muscat in the year 1315." Yet the penny is only
three years old, for the Moslems begin to date their years from the
_Hegira_, or flight of their prophet from Mecca to Medina. This took place
in the year 622 A.D. But we must also remember that their year is several
days shorter than ours, because they have lunar months all of equal length
and only 360 days in a year.
How strange it is to read such an old date for such a recent year as 1899,
since we count time from the birth of Christ! But you must remember that
the False Prophet has had it all his own way in Arabia for thirteen
hundred years, and that the missionaries in this country are very few
indeed. Only for a very few years and in a very few places has Christ been
preached.
Now, however, even this queer little penny can bear witness to the fact
that the gospel has come to Oman. It is worth one-quarter of an anna;
there are sixteen annas in a rupee, and a rupee is worth about
thirty-three cents. Not a big value, is it? But for four of these coins
the poorest boy in Muscat can buy a complete gospel of Matthew. The
shopkeeper must take in a great many of them, for last year one thousand
four hundred and thirty-three such gospels and other portions of the Bible
were sold in this part of Arabia and paid for by these coppers.
Another interesting fact to notice is that part of the inscription on the
coin is English. Coming events cast their shadows before. England's power
in checking the cruel slave trade and rooting out piracy on the coasts of
Arabia has made its influence felt. An English primer is sure to follow a
penny with an English motto, and some day our mission will have a school
at Muscat for Arab boys and girls, as well as for rescued slaves. Your
American pennies and your prayers will help to bring it about. Moreover,
do you not think that if they keep on buying gospels and reading them,
Jesus Christ will some time be the true _Imam of Muscat and Oman_?
[Illustration: HASSA COINS.]
The other coin is the only _old_ coin that is at present current in
Arabia, and I leave you to decide whether it is not the oddest and
queerest penny you have ever seen. The first time I saw these queer
blacksmith-nail coins was in 1893, when I made a visit to Hofhoof, the
capital of the province of Hassa, in Eastern Arabia. The people used them,
as we do pennies, for all small purchases, but I fear such a _pointed_
coin must have been harder on their pockets than our round coins. It is
called the _Taweelah_, or long-bit, and consists of a small copper-bar of
about an inch in length, split at one end and with the fissure slightly
opened. The coin has neither date nor motto, although one can yet
occasionally find silver coins of like shape with the Arabic motto:
_"Honour to the sober man, dishonour to the ambitious."_ The coin,
although it has no date, was undoubtedly made by one of the Carmathian
rulers about the year 920 A.D. This was more than five hundred years
before Columbus discovered America! The Carmathians were a very fanatical
sect of Moslems. You remember reading in chapter three how they took the
black stone from Mecca?
Well, these people had this province as the centre of their power and here
they struck these peculiar coins. I have heard it said that they were so
opposed to images and faces on money that their leader devised this long
bar-like shape for his coins to prevent any one from making images on
them!
At any rate the Carmathians were very brave warriors. When Abu Tahir,
their first leader, attacked Bagdad with only 500 horsemen he was met by a
messenger from the city saying that 30,000 soldiers were guarding the
gates. "Yes," said Abu Tahir, "but among them all there are not three such
as these." At the same instant he turned to three of his companions
commanding one to plunge a dagger into his own breast, another to leap
into the rushing Tigris river and the third to cast himself down a
precipice. They obeyed without a murmur. "Relate," continued the general,
"what you have just seen; before evening your leader shall be chained
among my dogs." No wonder that with such absolute obedience, the
Carmathians terrified all Arabia with their army.
As I handle their old coins and think of the past, I sometimes wonder how
much Our Great Captain, Christ Jesus would accomplish had He soldiers
equally obedient and brave as did the Carmathian general, in redeeming
Arabia from its long darkness and bloodshed. It is nineteen hundred years
ago that He commanded us: "Go ye into all the world and preach the
gospel."
But even now there is no one preaching the gospel in Hassa nor in all the
interior of Arabia. Why?