Cufic Inscriptions And Coins, have their name from Cufah, a city of Irak-Arabi, on the Nahr-Cufah or Euphrates, in the pashalic of Bagdad. Cufah was built under Omar, the second caliph, after his capture of Modain, the capital of Sassanidic Persia. It was the residence of Ali, the fourth caliph, and a century later of Abul Abbas, the founder of the Ab-basside dynasty; it also possessed a celebrated school. After the foundation of Bagdad by Al-Mansoor, the second Abbasside, Cufah was neglected and began to decay. In the time of Mohammed the Arabs of Hedjaz used a writing similar to the Neskhi, which may be seen in some papyri in the Memoires of the French academy and in the "Asiatic Journal." According to Arabic tradition, writing at that time was newly invented and in little use. Whether the Arabs of Yemen, Irak, Mesopotamia, and central Arabia had derived their writing, much earlier, from the Phoenician, or Palmyrean, or Sassanidic, is not ascertained. The Cufic, or properly Kiufi, however, is probably derived from the Syrian estranghelo \ round). It is coarse, stiff, angular, and not so distinct as the modes of writing derived from it. It consists of 18 forms of letters, 8 of which, by being marked with diacritic points, represent 10 sounds of the modern Arabic writing (these we include in parentheses), namely: a, b, (t, th), the English j (h, kh), d (dh, the English th, as in this), r (z), s (sh), ss (dz, Spanish c in celebre), t, ain (ghain, both peculiar gutturals, or rather faucals), f, 1c harsh, Jo soft, I, m, n, h (or merely the spiritus lenis), u, i or y (German i, j). In manuscripts, the vowels are sometimes marked with red or yellow points. This writing was used in manuscripts for about three centuries; on coins and sepulchral monuments and in titles of books, for about seven centuries after Mohammed. Even now the writing of the African Arabs and Moors resembles the Kiufi; while the orientals, who are very fond of flowing, elegant, slender letters, use, especially for copying, the Neskhi, whose introduction is attributed to Ibn Mokla, in the fourth century of the Hegira. There are also many other modifications in Persian, Turkish, Hindostanee, and Malay chirographs. - Cufic characters are found on the coins of almost all Mohammedan nations.

The coins of the earlier rulers are mostly without an effigy, and ill-stamped; hut the most celebrated ones show the face of the ruler, although this is anti-Mohammedan; and those of later times exhibit either a sign of the zodiac or stars, or the heraldic sign (tamgha) of the Turkish sovereigns. The inscriptions on the coins contain the name of the potentate by whom they are issued, the year of coinage, etc, and most frequently the phrase, "Coined in the name of Allah," either around or on the edge, and sometimes in two lines. The form is, on the whole, either Byzantine or Persian, in the style of Nushirvan or Chosroes I., and of Parviz or Chosroes II., both Sassanides. The dates of these coins extend from the Ommiyades, who ruled at Damascus from 661 to 750, down to the emirs of Ghuzni, who bore sway in Turkistan, Persia, and India as late as the 12th century; most of them, however, belong to the 10th century of our era. Those of gold are called dinar; those of silver, dirhem; those of bronze or copper, fuls. Of some only halves and quarters of the original pieces now exist.

The inscriptions are in several languages, some in two at once, some even in Arabic and Russian. They are found in Africa and Asia, from the Caspian and Euxine to the Baltic, in Pomerania, Brandenburg, etc, where they have been brought by commerce; and they are also met with in Spain, Naples, Sicily, etc. Glass medals are also found bearing Cufic inscriptions on either face or on both; they are about a quarter of an inch thick, and some have a higher margin on one side than on the other. These probably belong to the Fatimite dynasty of Egypt; and some of them come down to the Mameluke sultans (1766). It is uncertain whether they were current as money. - See G. C. Adler, Museum Borgianum (Altona, 1780); Sylvestre do Sacy, Memoires de l'academie francaise; Lindenberg, Sur quelques medail-les coujiques et sur quelques MSS. coujiques (Copenhagen, 1830); Moller, Orientalische Paldograpliie (Gotha, 1844); and other treatises, especially those of Fraehn, published at Kazan and St. Petersburg, and more recently those of Dorn, Stickel, De Saulcy, Olshausen, and Loret.