Finding ancient coins: an early numismatic study on the spread of Islam from Arab to the Nusantara

The current research is aimed to trace and find out the ancient coins from Arabic found in the archipelago and their relation to literacy related to the history of the Islamization process and the accelerated development of Islamic civilization in this region. As a preliminary study, this research was conducted with an exploratory approach intended to collect data for the first stage in the historical research method, namely heuristics. Focus Group Discussion (FGD), observation, and interviews with various relevant stakeholders were conducted to collect the data. The assumption of this study was based on tentative findings of Ery Soedewo and Ichwan Azhari. The ancient coins found in Nusantara are Dirham (silver coins) from the Sasanid Empire with the Persian-Majusi symbol from the 7th century found in North Sumatra. In this area, dirhams with Arabic-Islamic inscriptions during the Umayyad Caliphate in the 7th and 8th centuries are also found. They were still produced during the Abbasid Caliphate to the 10th century. Some of the coins are stored in the North Sumatra Money Museum, The Museum of Quranic History in Medan, and a collector in Palembang, South Sumatra. This Finding correlated with Buya Hamka’s notion of Islam’s advent in the archipelago beginning in the first century of Hegira (seventh century AD). Michael Flecher’s research on the Belitung Wreck site comes from the eighth century AD, estimated shipped from Arabia. The result indicates that The trading activities influenced Islamic spread in Indonesia from Arab to Indonesia. The coins as a means of exchange also coined the most fundamental Islamic principle, tauhid.