Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/265

Rh the silver dollar, and when these coins were refused, the Khaleefa decreed that all future offenders should be punished by the confiscation of their property and the loss of a hand and foot. The merchants, though, were equal to the occasion; when an intending purchaser inquired about the price of an article, the vendor asked him in what coinage he intended to pay; the merchant then knew what price to ask.

As the silver dollars gradually disappeared, the few remaining went up enormously in value, until in the end they were valued at fifty to sixty of the Beit-el-Mal coins, so that an article which could be bought for a silver dollar could not be purchased under fifty to sixty copper dollars. Although a rate of exchange was forbidden, the Beit-el-Mal took advantage of the state of affairs by buying in the copper dollars, melting them up, recasting, and striking from a different die. These coins would be again issued at the value of a silver dollar, and the remaining copper dollars in the town were put out of circulation by the Beit-el-Mal's refusal to receive them. To make matters worse, the die cutters cut dies for themselves and their friends, and it was worth the while of the false (?) coiners to make a dollar of better metal than the Beitel-Mal did, and these we re-accepted at a premium. The false coinage business flourished until Elias el Kurdi, one of the best of the die cutters, was permanently incapacitated by losing his right hand and left foot; and this punishment, for a time at least, acted as a deterrent upon others, leaving the Beit-el-Mal the entire monopoly of coinage.