al-Ashʿath (1); nevertheless, he never came face-to-face with Shabīb but withdrew. Al-Ḥajjāj therefore sent in his place ʿUthmān ibn Qaṭan al-Ḥārithī. They met toward the end of the year, whereupon ʿUthmān ibn Qaṭan was killed and his troops broke in flight after six hundred of his men had perished. Among the notable dead were ʿAqīl ibn Shaddād al-Salūlī, Khālid ibn Nuhayk al-Kindī, and al-Aswad ibn Rabīʿah.
Shabīb’s power now loomed large; ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, al-Ḥajjāj, and the rest of the commanders were shaken. ʿAbd al-Malik grew extremely fearful of him, so he dispatched an army of Syrians, which arrived the following year. Yet Shabīb had with him only a small band (2), though he had filled people’s hearts with terror (3). Many confrontations ensued between him and them—too numerous to recount in detail—and this remained the pattern on both sides until the year drew to a close.
Ibn Jarīr (4) says: “In this same year ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān stamped inscriptions on the dirhams and dinars; he was the first to do so.”
The jurist al-Māwardī writes in al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyyah (5): “There is a difference of opinion as to who first struck coins in Arabic during Islam.” Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib held that the first to mint inscribed dirhams was ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān; before that, the dinars were Byzantine and the dirhams Sassanian.
Abū al-Zinād adds: “This occurred in the year 74 AH (6).”
Al-Madāʾinī says it took place in 75 AH and that the coins reached all the provinces in 76 AH (7); he relates that one side bore the words, “Allah is One,” and the other, “Allah, the Everlasting Refuge.”
He further reports—quoting Yahyā ibn al-Nuʿmān al-Ghifārī from his father—that the first to mint dirhams was Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr, acting on the orders of his brother ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, in the year 70 AH according to the Sassanian style. One face carried the word “barakah” (blessing) and the other “Allah.” Later al-Ḥajjāj altered them, inscribing his own name on one side (8), and afterward they were refined once more.