A 1792 law directed American money to be made of gold, silver and copper. We used to trade gold, silver, and copper. In 1909, President Lincoln appeared on a one-cent coin and became the first real person-as well as the first American president-to have his face appear on a regular-issue American coin.

George Washington was our first President – but not the first President on a circulating coin. It was so big that it was hard to use, but it wasn't replaced by a smaller penny until 1857, more than 50 years later. America's first one-cent piece, called the 'large cent,' was first struck in 1793, one year after the Mint opened. Would you like fries with that? This penny is almost as big as a half dollar. Only nickels are one solid material-that same 75% copper/25% nickel alloy. Pennies are made of zinc coated with copper. The outside layers are three-quarters copper and one-quarter nickel, and the 'filling' is solid copper. You might have little round sandwiches in your pocket. Fortunately, pennies were only made that way for one year. Because the color was silvery, it was easy to mistake a penny for a dime. In 1943, copper was needed for war materials, so pennies were made out of zinc-coated steel. Although they are different colors, pennies and dimes are very close in size. However, in the case of some Arabic-Islamic motifs, the Arab-Sasanian copper coinage offers the sole evidence.Fun Facts related to the Penny Once it was hard to tell a penny from a dime. Despite this, the existence of the standing caliph type of Umayyad coinage testifies to Iranian participation in the creation of a general Arab-Islamic iconography. The Arab-Sasanian copper coinage testifies to the long lasting influence of the type featuring the bust of the Sasanian king Khusro II and to the persistence of a strong Iranian character. These latter examples make up the majority of the coins minted after the monetary reform of the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik' which introduced a purely epigraphic type in Arabic. These coins are discussed in the first chapter whereas the second and third chapters deal with those coins which have no specific monetary prototype examined. Some of the coin types are based on monetary prototypes from late Sasanian and Ara-Sasanian, Byzantine and Umayyad silver coinage. The available corpus contains approximately 330 coins from of more than a hundred different types can be distinguished.These are described and illustrated in the catalogue, which is supplemented by a synopsis in order to give a clear picture of the iconographic repertoire of these coin issues. The Arab-Sasanian copper coins serve as evidence to the determination of the Iranians to retain signs of their cultural identity and the desire of the Arabs to articulate their Muslim faith in a region where an older cultural and religious ideology remains strong. The value of Arab-Sasanian copper coinage lies in the variety of its iconography and in the content of the inscriptions which provide evidence of the political and cultural fermentation in regions previously under Sasanian hegemony after the Arab conquest. It is a survey of copper coinage minted during the first hundred and fifty years of Arabic domination in regions previously under Sasanian rule. This volume is associated with the research project “Sylloge Nummorum Sysanidorum” carried out by the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Copper coins