The basis for prohibiting it is what Aḥmad narrated: Ibn Masʿūd sold the dross of the public treasury, so ʿUmar forbade him, and he melted it down. The basis for permitting it is what Abū Bakr narrated, through his chain of transmission from ʿUmar: “If someone’s dirhams are rejected, let him go to the market and buy a threadbare garment with them.”
Aḥmad responded to this hadith, according to the report of Ḥanbal: “ʿUmar’s statement, ‘If someone’s dirhams are rejected,’ means that they had been rejected from him. ʿUmar did not command people to spend defective coins. This type of coin did not exist during ʿUmar’s time; it only came about afterward.”
There was disagreement over who was the first to mint these coins in Islam. Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib related that the first person to mint inscribed coins was ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. At that time, the dinars were Byzantine and the dirhams were Sasanian. Abū al-Zinād said: “ʿAbd al-Malik ordered al-Ḥajjāj to mint the dirhams, and he minted them in the year 74.” Al-Madāʾinī, however, said: “Rather, al-Ḥajjāj minted them at the end of the year 75, and then ordered them to be minted in the provinces in the year 76.”
It was also said that al-Ḥajjāj refined them, though he did not make them completely pure, and inscribed on them, “Allah is One; Allah, the Self-Sufficient.” They were therefore called al-makrūhah—the “disliked” coins. There was disagreement over why they received this name. Some said that it was because the jurists disliked them on account of the Quranic inscription they bore, since someone in a state of major ritual impurity or minor ritual impurity might carry them.
The reports from Aḥmad also differed concerning a person in a state of minor ritual impurity carrying them. In the report of al-Marwazī, he said: “Only a ritually pure person may touch the dirhams, just as if the Quran had been written on a sheet of paper.” In the reports of Abū Ṭālib and Ibn Manṣūr, he said: “It is permissible, because there is a need for it and the hardship is widespread; therefore, it is excused.”