Page 140 - Arabian Studies (I)

124 Arabian Studies l
To sum up, we might say that Thacbat was discovered as a small
peaceful village by the Sulayhid, Mansur b. al-Mufaddal, and used by
him as a quiet retreat, particularly in his later life. Neglected by the
Ayyubids, the village was used again by the first and second Rasiilid
sultans, al-Mansur and al-Muzaffar, and especially by the fourth,
al-Mifayyad, who built palaces there, and the fifth, al-Mujahid, who
turned it into a town and a place of learning and built defensive walls
around it. The sixth and seventh sultans, al-Afdal and al-Ashraf, lived
in Thacbat also, but lack of further references in the sources to the
place after al-Ashraf leads us to the inevitable conclusion that it
became less popular after his death in 803/1400. We have now
turned full circle. Thacbat was found a small, quiet village and was
later developed and expanded into a town. Today it is once more
that small, quiet village.

The Medieval Mint of Thacbat2 5

Our evidence that Thacbat had a mint in medieval times is found in
the four coins, two dated 764/1363—4, one 765/1364—5 and one
769/1367-8, so far brought to the attention of scholars.26 All these
were struck in the name of al-Malik al-Afdal Dirgham al-DTn
al-cAbbas (764-778/1363-78), the sixth Rasuiid sultan, who does
not figure prominently in the historical notes above.
Whatever one’s picture of the medieval mint in the Yemen, it
appears at first difficult to explain the presence of a mint in Thacbat,
when that of Tacizz, only three kilometres distant, was already long
established, dating at the latest from the time of the third Ayyubid
ruler in the Yemen, al-Malik al-Mucizz IsmacIl.2 7 Careful study of
those Rasiilid coins discovered, however, reveals that no coins were
i minted in Tacizz about the time of those known from Thacbat.
Whereas coins continued to be produced in Aden, ZabTd and
al-Mahjam throughout the Rasuiid period, between the years
7502 8—77729/1349-76, from our available evidence, the Tacizz
mint produced nothing. Could it have been moved to Thacbat along
with the other trappings of administration and government? One
further discovery supports this suggestion. In his introduction to the
Rasuiid coins he published, Prideaux remarks3 0 that one of the three
Thacbat coins which figure in his article was engraved with the
Tacizz mint figure, namely a seated man.
Perhaps we can then hazard the guess that it was the policy of the
new sultan, al-Afdal, when he came to power in 764/1363, to have
one of the Rasuiid mints moved to Thacbat from Tacizz.31 With our
present knowledge, it seems that this arrangement continued until at