The Artuqid dynasty was a short-lived period of rule centered in Jazira, as the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was known. The Artuqids were a clan of Turkoman origin, and ruled in the Diyarbakir regions of modern southeast Turkey during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Arts and cultural products of the Artuqid period are influenced by a wide variety of Muslim and non-Muslim sources, including Arabia, pre-Islamic Persia, and Christian Byzantium.

The earliest coins of the Artuqid dynasty are based upon Christian imagery from Byzantine coins. This example shows the image of an enthroned Christ on one side, and though Islam proscribed against such images depicting the human form, experts at the British Museum explain that "many [such coins] have been found countermarked by local Muslim rulers, indicating that their use was officially sanctioned."¹  It is unlikely that these the local leaders were unfamiliar with the Christian source of this imagery, and we can only assume that relations between Muslims and Byzantine Christians at this juncture and in this geographic location were suitably warm enough to permit such a borrowing on officially sanctioned coinage.

(1) From the British Museum web page dedicated to this object.