COINS OF AFRICA

Coins of Africa The Aksumite kings, powerful rulers of a kingdom in northern Ethiopia from the 2nd to the 9th century AD, and Christian from the 4th century, issued small gold coins, with a little bronze and very rare silver, from the 3rd century onward; the initially Greek inscriptions were replaced ultimately by Amharic. Indigenous coinage lapsed in the 10th century, the country becoming dependent on imported currencies, of which the silver Maria Theresa thalers of Austria were conspicuous from the 18th century onward. National coinage was resumed by King Menilek II, emperor of Ethiopia (18891913) with silver coins called talaris and their fractions and subsidiary copper, showing the Lion of Judah reversean allusion to the tradition that Menilek I had been the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Some gold came later, to be continued by Emperor Haile Selassie (193036), who coined also in nickel and bronze until the Italian occupation and after his restoration in 1941. A national coinage continued after he was deposed in 1974. North Africa Elsewhere the 19th-century partition of Africa by colonial powers led to a great miscellany of currencies before decolonization and independence were achieved from the mid-20th century. Egypt, gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1914, based its currency on the piastre, with Arabic inscriptions; some gold and silver multiples were produced. Under Fu'ad I (192236) and Farouk I (193652) the royal portrait was used. The subsequent republic, with its piastres of aluminumbronze alloy accompanied by rare silver and even rarer gold, has often chosen types referring to national history (e.g., the Great Sphinx, Ramses II, the Aswan High Dam). The piastre became the unit of Libya, which, after a period as an Italian colony, briefly became a kingdom under Idris I (195169), with a fine portrait coinage, before the regime of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. The piastre was also the unit of the French protectorate of Tunisia until 1891, when a coinage of francs and centimes was introduced. Independence from France in 1956 brought Arabic inscriptions. The piastre was also adopted in 1956 as the unit of the new republic of The Sudan. In Morocco, however, which was an early 20th-century protectorate of France, the unit was the Arabic silver dirham, replaced in 1902 by the silver rial until the introduction of the franc in 1921.