The Dirham Coin didn't even exist in Muhammad's time?

Rajiv Abraham had a good Question, asking whether there were, “Any documents from the time of Mohammed showing financial transactions in Dirham instead of Drachma?”. In other words, did the Dirham even exist during Muhammad’s lifetime? Muslims would say that the word ‘Dirham’ is nothing more an Arabic reference for the existing Byzantine ‘Drachma’ coin, so therefore the Dirham would have existed at the time of Muhammad. But this ‘begs the question’, because the coin itself, the Dirham coin, was only introduced during the time of the first Caliph Mu’awiya, from the Umayyad dynasty, who ruled from 661 AD – 280 AD. So, it was he who first minted Dirhams, but not until 661 AD onwards. Therefore, the coin itself, the Dirham, would not have existed during the time of Muhammad, because it wasn’t even created for another 30 years after his death. We do have references to transactions between Arabs and Byzantines as far back as 643 AD, including the PERF 558 (pictured on the right), which is nothing more than financial transaction, written in both Arabic and Greek. But nowhere in this document do we find mention of any Dirhams. The reason why we ask the question about Dirhams, however, has to do with Surah 12:20, which is about the story of Joseph. In verse 20 he is being sold to the Egyptians for, “A few dirhams counted out”, suggesting that they must have used coins at the time of Joseph. But Joseph lived in 1800 BC, and coins weren’t created until the 600s BC, by the Lydians, so that this reference to coins is 1200 years too early. What’s more, Dirhams weren’t introduced until 661 AD, when Mu’awiyya introduced them as the new Caliph. So, how could Muhammad have been referring to coins which would not be created or introduced for another 30 years, unless, of course, he was prophetic, or simply wrong? This suggests to me that the story of Joseph in Surah 12, and the ‘few dirhams counted out’ in verse 20, were probably included in the Qur’an at a much later date, sometime after 661 AD. But don’t we have the same problem with the Bible? Isn’t the wrong coinage, and the wrong currency found in that story in Genesis 37:28? The answer is that in the Biblical account, Joseph is sold for 20 shekels. The shekel is not a coin, but a weighted measure used for commerce in that part of the world, since the 3rd millennia. What’s more, we now know that 20 Shekels is about 0.2% of a kg of silver, and that this would be the approximate price for a slave at that time! So, while the currency used in the Qur’anic account for the story of Joseph proves to be incorrect, the currency in the Biblical account not only turns out to be the right currency, but the price used in the Bible is the correct price as well; proving that history condemns the Qur’an for its inaccuracies, but simultaneously supports the Bible for its amazing accuracy. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020 (26,780)