A thing that fills me with joy is that coins struck for the 8th century Saxon king Offa in the 8th century early medieval kingdom of Mercia, in modern England, were largely copied from coins struck for Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, which were common currency across much of early medieval Europe, Asia and Africa.
In addition to the words Offa Rex, Latin for “King Offa”, stamped across the centre of the coins, the coins also bear the slightly distorted but distinctly readable Arabic words “there is no God but Allah” around the edges in Kufic script.
Every time gammons go on and on about “clash of civilisations” and “hordes of immigrants”, remember that the actual evidence shows that we have *always* had a deeply interconnected world, materially, economically, culturally and genetically.
https://artofthemiddleages.com/s/main/item/3140#:~:text=Description%3A%20This%20gold%20coin%20was,Abbasid%20caliph%20in%20Baghdad%20(r.
Offa dinar · Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World · Omeka S
