#king offa

[medievalistsnet]

Offa the Great: The Mercian King Who Reshaped England

Offa was one of the most powerful rulers of early medieval England, transforming Mercia into the dominant kingdom south of the Humber. In this article, Rory Naismith examines his reign, from the construction of Offa’s Dyke to the remarkable coinage and political ambitions that reshaped the English landscape.

Read here

[enbycrip]

A thing that fills me with joy is that coins struck for the 8th century Saxon king Offa in the 8th century early medieval kingdom of Mercia, in modern England, were largely copied from coins struck for Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, which were common currency across much of early medieval Europe, Asia and Africa.

In addition to the words Offa Rex, Latin for “King Offa”, stamped across the centre of the coins, the coins also bear the slightly distorted but distinctly readable Arabic words “there is no God but Allah” around the edges in Kufic script.

Every time gammons go on and on about “clash of civilisations” and “hordes of immigrants”, remember that the actual evidence shows that we have *always* had a deeply interconnected world, materially, economically, culturally and genetically.

https://artofthemiddleages.com/s/main/item/3140#:~:text=Description%3A%20This%20gold%20coin%20was,Abbasid%20caliph%20in%20Baghdad%20(r.

Offa dinar · Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World · Omeka S

[fyeahjsmnquotesandfootnotes]

...we both agreed that all would be well providing I left instantly and came home by the most direct way possible--in other words i should ride up to the Dyke and cross over into England before the storm was upon me.*

*The Dyke is a great wall of earth and stones, now much decayed, which divides Wales from England--the work of Offa, an eighth-century Mercian king, who had learnt by experience to distrust his Welsh nighbours.

[sermolupiadanglos-blog]

Swathed bodies in the long ditch; one eye upstaring. It is safe to presume, here, the king’s anger. He reigned forty years. Seasons touched and retouched the soil. /

Heathland, new-made watermeadow. Charlock, marsh-marigold. Crepitant oak forest where the boar furrowed black mould, his snout intimate with worms and leaves.

Geoffrey Hill, Mercian Hymns, XI.

[sermolupiadanglos-blog]

Coins handsome as Nero’s; of good substance and weight. Offa Rex resonant in silver, and the names of his moneyers. They struck with accountable tact. They could alter the king’s face.

Exactness of design was to deter imitation; mutilation if that failed. Exemplary metal, ripe for commerce. Value from a sparse people, scrapers of salt-pans and byres.

Swathed bodies in the long ditch; one eye upstaring. It is safe to presume, here, the king’s anger. He reigned forty years. Seasons touched and retouched the soil.

Heathland, new-made watermeadow. Charlock, marsh-marigold. Crepitant oak forest where the boar furrowed black mould, his snout intimate with worms and leaves.

Geoffrey Hill, Mercian Hymns, XI.

[sermolupiadanglos-blog]

So much for the elves’ wergild, the true governance of England, the gaunt warrior-gospel armoured in engraved stone.

I wormed my way heavenward for ages amid barbaric ivy, scrollwork of fern.

King of the perennial holly-groves, the riven sandstone: overlord of the M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch, the citadel at Tamworth, the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh Bridge and the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates: saltmaster: moneychanger: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the friend of Charlemagne.