Coins in jewellery

The Spanish Pillar Dollar in Middle Eastern jewellery

Published Jan 10, 2024

Here is a coin that has been very popular in North Africa and the Middle East for centuries! And what is more, its name is still pronounced many times a day, and it captures popular imagination – even yours, although you may not realize it yet… But when it comes to jewellery from the Middle East & North Africa, this is one of the forgotten coins. Its obscurity is totally undeserved, however, so let’s look at the many lives of the pillar dollar!

Pillar dollar: what is it?

The pillar dollar is among the very first machine-tooled coins. Before that, coins were struck manually. The size and even the silver content of coins had varied greatly since Antiquity, but these new Spanish coins? They were something else! They always had the same shape, size, weight and decoration – they were reliable. [1]

The pillar dollar was produced from 1732 onwards. These coins get their name from the two pillars of Hercules on the reverse. These refer to the two rock formations in the Street of Gibraltar. You’ll see in the image above (and in the detailed photos below) that the pillars flank a crowned coat of arms: a not-so-subtle way of saying Spain dominated both the old and the new world.

And that new world is where these coins were produced. The denominations of 8, 4, 2, 1 and .50 Spanish reales (pronounced ‘ray-al-es’) were made of silver mined in Middle America. The coins were exported to Europe: just imagine those galleons, loaded with treasure chests brimming with actual money, sailing across the Atlantic….and you’ll get why all the classic piracy tales involve ‘pieces of eight’ – those are the 8 reales coins.

Pillar dollar and the world economy

That eight reales coin grew increasingly popular because its silver content was consistent, and it was widely available. It was, in other words, a stable coin that would not lose its value any time soon.

It was widely used in the Ottoman Empire, and so you will find it labeled with many names in Turkish:  it was variously referred to as kara kuruş, kebir kuruş, tamam kuruş, real kuruş and riyal.

And that is how it ends up being pronounced hundreds of times a day- today! Riyal is a derivate of its Spanish name, real. It remained the word of choice in Arabic to indicate official coins. [2]

Pillar dollars in jewellery from the Middle East & North Africa

Before banks, before plastic money and cryptocurrency, jewellery was the way to go for building up capital and emergency resources. Coins were worn on clothing and in jewellery: as savings, but certainly also to show off.⁠ The value of coins was, like jewellery itself, in their content of precious metal: even when it had been altered, its silver value would still be valuable.⁠ And the pillar dollar was a prized coin, precisely because of its silver content.

In Egypt, the coin was often worn as pendant on a necklace, like the coin shown above. This is an actual pillar dollar from 1817. In Egypt, the coin was called Abu Madfa, Father of Cannons: the Pillars of Hercules were interpreted as cannons.

Because of that interpretation, the coin soon became a much sought-after amulet as well: as cannons are made of iron, a material that jinn are afraid of, wearing a coin that showed two sizeable cannons would surely keep them at a distance!

Pillar dollars: imitation coins in jewellery

Because of this huge popularity, both as currency and as adornment, the pillar dollar was imitated at a large scale. That is more a matter of ‘keeping up appearances’ than actively engaging with counterfeit money – no one expected to be paid in fake pillar dollars, but wearing them sure looked good from a distance!

And for its function as an amulet, it really did not matter much if the coin was real: as long as those pillars were on it, it was all good. The gallery above shows a few of those imitations of the pillar dollar, in varying degrees of success: all of these were used in jewellery and adornment from the Middle East and North Africa.

The pillar dollar: a universal coin in jewellery

So you see how this coin once was of great importance for trade and commerce. But coins like these have many lives: as currency, as adornment, as amulet, and also as collected object. It’s never just one thing, and that makes these pieces so meaningful!⁠

This blog is based on my book Desert Silver.

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References

[1] Schienerl, P.W. 1981. Spanish/Mexican Dollars in Egypt: Currency – Raw material for Silversmiths – Ornament – Amulet, in: Ornament 5 (3).

[2] Some collectors have taken to call the pillar dollar riyal, too, instead of real: an interesting form of reversing this linguistic journey.

 

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