The largest treasure of gold coins discovered in Israel was found in recent weeks on the seabed in the ancient harbor in Caesarea National Park, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said on Tuesday.
A group of divers from the diving club in the harbor reported the find to the IAA whose officials then went with the divers to the location with a metal detector and uncovered almost 2,000 gold coins from the Fatimid period (eleventh century CE) in different denominations: a dinar, half dinar and quarter dinar, of various dimensions and weight.
Kobi Sharvit, director of the Marine Archaeology Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority said there is probably a shipwreck near the find of an official Fatimid treasury boat which was on its way to the central government in Cairo after collecting taxes. Sharvit said the coins were meant to pay the salaries of the Fatimid military garrison which was stationed in Caesarea, or in the alternative the coins belonged to a large merchant ship.
[…] The IAA reported that the earliest coin exposed in the treasure is a quarter dinar minted in Palermo, Sicily in the second half of the ninth century CE. Most of the discovered coins belong to the Fatimid caliphs Al-Ḥākim (996–1021 CE) and his son Al-Ẓāhir (1021–1036), and were minted in Egypt and North Africa.
The Fatimids, who came from North Africa, developed the ancient city of Caesarea and other coastal cities in the area.
Robert Cole, an expert numismaticist with the IAA said the coins are in an excellent state of preservation, and despite the fact they were at the bottom of the sea for about a thousand years, they did not require any cleaning or conservation intervention from the metallurgical laboratory.
The gold coins were minted by caliphs who ruled the Fatimid Kingdom, which spanned much of North Africa and the Mediterranean. The earliest coin in the trove was minted in Sicility in the ninth century, though most were minted by the caliphs Al Hakim and Al Zahir, who ruled between A.D. 996 and A.D. 1031. Some of the same types of coins were circulating decades later, when crusaders conquered Jerusalem in A.D. 1099.
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All related Fatimids at Ismailimail: https://ismailimail.wordpress.com/category/fatimids/
Ismailimail 
What a find. They look like they’ve been freshly minted. I’d be interested to learn where they’ll end up.
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Historic find by IAA
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Wow, what a find! A tribute to the Fatimid Empire. I would love to see the coins at the Aga Khan Museum.
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