Incomplete dirham

This is a planchet of an Islamic silver coin, a dirham, without the front or back face. However, the double circle on the perimeter is visible on the coin. The planchet is part of a hoard of Islamic coins found in Bertby, Saltvik, in 1876. More than 800 coins were found inside and around a bronze jug, along with more than 100 imitations, some of which had been made with the same punch. Islamic coins have text in Arabic on both sides, but the Bertby hoard also contained several dirhams on which no text had been struck, only the perimeter circles. The Vikings went to the Middle East to get huge amounts of silver, and individual mints were unable to meet the demand, which is why coins were also stamped with unfinished stamps. In the Nordic countries, the value of coins was based on the weight of silver, so the inscriptions were irrelevant. The objects had been hidden sometime after 874.