emperor (like Louis the Pious) or archbishop (e.g., Wigmund of York). On the other hand, they might not reference any king at all, and may relate to the issuing city (e.g., Chartres) or moneyer (like Pendred and Ciolhard at London under Offa). Some gold pieces were simply struck from regular silver dies. In addition to these gold pieces with meaningful inscriptions issued in the west, there circulated some genuine Arabic dinars and imitations of them. Curiously, several of these imitative dinars—including the famous example bearing the name of Offa of Mercia—are based on originals struck in the year 157 AH (773 or 774 AD). The precise significance of this remains uncertain: it may be that careful copies of a coin of this year circulated widely, or that particularly many dinars of this year entered the west for some reason. For all that the surviving western specimens of early medieval gold coins must represent only a tiny proportion of the original stock, it must be borne in mind that before the 13th century gold coins were extremely rare in western Europe: in England, for instance, only eight native gold pieces with meaningful legends are known from c. 650 to 1066, which can be complemented by finds from the same period of half a dozen Arabic gold and perhaps ten Carolingian gold pieces or imitations of them. Substantial and regular production of gold coinage only resumed in the 13th century. See also Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe Coinage in Anglo-Saxon England Notes References Blackburn, M. A. S., 'Gold in England During the "Age of Silver" (eighth–eleventh centuries)', in The Silver Economy of the Viking Age, ed. J. Graham-Campbell & Gareth Williams (2007) Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, pp. 55–95 Day, William R. (2003). "The Monetary Reforms of Charlemagne and the Circulation of Money in Early Medieval Campania". Early Medieval Europe, 6(1), 25–45. Duplessy, J., 'La circulation des monnaies arabes en Europe occidentale du VIIIe au XIIIe siècle', Révue numismatique 5th series no. 18 (1956), 101–64 Grierson, P., 'The Gold Solidus of Louis the Pious and its Imitations', Jaarboek voor Munt- en Penningkunde 38 (1951), 1–41; repr. in his Dark Age Economics (London, 1979), no. VII Grierson, P., 'Carolingian Europe and the Arabs: the myth of the mancus', Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 32 (1954), 1059–74 Grierson, Philip & Blackburn, M. A. S., Medieval European Coinage, volume 1: the Early Middle