In its capacity as the principal city on the east coast of the Mediterranean, Antioch was an important center of both minting and coin circulation during the fourth through seventh centuries. Moreover, as the launching site for military expeditions against the Persians and, eventually, the Arabs, Antioch served as the temporary capital for emperors and other military leaders stationed there and as a distribution point for soldiers’ salaries and other monetary activities.

This chapter explores the establishemnt of the local mint and its activities from the days of the Seleucid monarchs to the late Roman Empire.

Chapter 1, a prelude, provides necessary background about the Mughal Empire, and details about its conquest of Gujarat beginning in 1572. Standard histories portray conquest as swift and decisive. The picture I present is somewhat different. Akbar’s annexation of Gujarat was a slow and protracted effort requiring the astute balancing of military force and the pacification and absorption of local political elites into Mughal administration. A successful campaign, as we shall see, absorbed local elites into the Mughal idiom of hierarchy, privileges, duties, and system of wealth distribution. The arranging of tribute payments and indemnities was a core feature of this system. Money over the course of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries became central to Mughal political dispensation. This background chapter concludes by laying out key opportunities Mughal rule provided for the Jhaveri family as they built their influence.

Chapter Three: Imperial Transitions (129 BCE–31 BCE) clarifies that it was the civic body that outlasted the fall of the Seleucid Empire and weathered Roman annexation. For much of this transitional period, the dysfunction of the final Seleucid kings and the subsequent hands-off attitude of the Roman generals and governors present within the city and Levant allowed or forced the Antiochians into managing their own internal affairs. In the early years of Roman rule in particular, it is difficult to claim that Antioch served as a provincial capital, because so much of the city was defined by the far more restricted authority of the citizens themselves.

Besides providing a brief illustrated account of Athens’ influential and widely disseminated Athena/owl silver coinage, this chapter surveys the huge silver mining and processing industry of southeast Attika, the role of coinage in the public and private economies of Athens and in international trade, and the minting of a bronze coinage for use at the Eleusinian festival.