Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

content is much debased. It would seem that Aksumite prosperity was on the decline 
through a combination of reasons, but that coins continued to be issued until the 
disruption of the Red Sea trade which had brought the experiment with a monetary 
economy into being finally removed the need for it. Some features of the design of the 
later coins are extremely reminiscent of Byzantine models.  
 
Illustration 16. Drawing of a silver coin (d. 16mm) of king Armah, depicting, on the 
reverse, a gateway adorned with three crosses, possibly representing the Holy Sepulchre 
in Jerusalem.  
There are certain factors which favour suggesting that king Gersem belongs at the end of 
the coinage sequence, but a number of alternative points might favour Armah as the last 
king of Aksum to issue coins (Munro-Hay 1984ii; Hahn 1983). Armah's name could 
conceivably be related to that of Ashama ibn Abjar, or his son Arha, known from the 
accounts of some early Islamic historians, through  the common process of Arab mis-
spellings or inversions by copyists (Hartmann 1895). Armah produced (so far as we know 
to date) no gold coins, which might suggest that he had accepted that there was no 
purpose in producing them, as his kingdom was by now at least in part cut off from the 
Byzantine trade network. His silver has an unusual reverse, depicting apparently a 
structure with three crosses, the central one gilded; Hahn (1983) suggested that this could 
represent the Holy Sepulchre, and have been placed on the coins in reference to the 
Persians' seizure of Jerusalem and the holy places in 614. On the obverse the king's 
crown is gilded as well. Armah's bronze coins are the largest produced by the Aksumites, 
and unusually show the king full- length, seated on a throne; these and the elaborate 
gilded silver coins may have been designed to compensate for the lack of gold. 
Unfortunately there are neither archaeological contexts, nor overstrikings among the 
coinage, which can confirm which of these kings actually issued the last coins of the 
Aksumite series.  
Structures have been found at Adulis, Aksum and Matara which contain the coins of all 
these later kings, showing that these towns were probably functioning at least until the 
end of the coinage, and were still under Aksumite control. Considerable quantities of 
pottery, often decorated with elaborate crosses, and other material including imported 
amphorae, provide evidence of still flourishing trade and local industries during the time 
of at least some of the later rulers. It is interesting to note, however, that the mottoes on 
the coins seem to grow increasingly less interested in royal and religious themes, but in 
the reigns of the later kings begin to ask for `Mercy and Peace to the Peoples'. Perhaps it 
is pure imagination to see in this a response to the current situation of Aksum, but it can 
be suggested that gradually things were getting worse in both the condition of the 
kingdom in general and in the capital itself. Aksum may possibly have suffered from  the 

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plague which reached Egypt in 541 (Procopius, ed. Dewing 1914: 451ff; see also 
Pankhurst 1961 for more notes on diseases in Ethiopia), and had spread all over the 
eastern part of the Roman empire a year or two later; some claimed that it had originated 
in `Ethiopia', but the term could refer to the Sudan or even other parts of Africa. If, 
however, Aksum was the victim of an epidemic, it might be an additional reason for the 
failure of the attempt to control king Abreha in the Yemen, and for the gradual decline of 
Aksum from that time onwards.  
An interesting, but very tentative, source for Aksumite history in the later sixth century 
takes us much further afield for sources, to China. In 1779 the T'ien-fang Chih-sheng 
shih-lu, written between 1721 and 1724 by Liu Chih, was published. This was a life of 
Muhammad, the `True Annals of the Prophet of Arabia', written using an older book of 
records about the prophet in Arabic found at Ts'eng Liu. It has been translated into 
English by Mason (1921). According to Leslie (1989) the original used by Liu Chih is 
very likely to have been a Persian translation of a biography of the prophet written by 
Sa`id al-Din Muhammad b. Mas`ud b. Muhammad al-Kazaruni, who died in 
AH758/1357AD, but at the time of writing the sources used by the latter have not yet 
been traced. However, it is interesting to note that the book contains a number of 
mentions of Abyssinia. The reigning najashi was said (Mason 1921: 35) to have sent an 
ambassador with gifts on sighting a star which marked the birth of the prophet (c570), 
and later (c577) when Muhammad was seven, the text (Mason 1921: 47) tells that the 
najashi Saifu ascended the throne. Abd al-Muttalib went to congratulate Saifu on his 
accession, and a speech of the former is quoted. He declared that  
"The great king, your grandfather, was a benevolent king, and his grandson is a holy 
sovereign, who breaks off with flatterers and follows what is right, avenges the oppressed 
and, acting upon right principles, administers the law equitably. Your servant is the 
superintendent of the sacrifices in the sacred precincts of the True God, a son of the 
Koreish, who, hearing that your Majesty has newly received the great precious throne, 
has come to present congratulations".  
Saifu recognised Muhammad's greatness from portents he had found in the books, but 
prophesied that he would have troubles.  
However much the Chinese translation may colour the narrative, there remain very 
interesting points in this account. If a king `Saifu' came to the Aksumite throne in c577, 
and was the grandson of a particularly eminent Aksumite monarch, could that monarch 
have been Kaleb, so well-known to the Arabs as the conqueror of the Yemen? The text 
also adds (Mason 1921: 102) that Saifu's own grandson was the najashi who received the 
Muslim emigrants in the fifth year of Muhammad's prophetship, 615-6AD (
Ch. 15: 4
). If 
this very late and very much second- hand account deserves any credit we may postulate 
that Kaleb's son(s) ruled until c577, to be succeeded then by his grandson, followed by 
other members of the same family until Ashama ibn Abjar. Ibn Ishaq (Guillaume 1955: 
153ff) says that Ashama only succeeded after the reign of an uncle who had usurped the 
throne from Ashama's father (
Ch. 7: 5
). The coins and inscriptions offer, as we have seen, 
Alla Amidas/Wazena, and Ella Gabaz/W'ZB (Kaleb's sons?), followed by Ioel, Hataz, 
Israel, Armah and Gersem, for this period. It seems that this comes close to the number of 

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