| Java, Batavia |
| Silver, Diam. 34 mm. |
Dutch East India Company, 1750 AD |
| Collection of the American Numismatic Society, 1917.215.3633 W: 11.469 |
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Islam's script accompanied the faith in its eastward expansion into Southeast Asia in the thirteenth through eighteenth centuries so that Java and the rest of the Indonesian archipelago were largely Muslim by the time the Dutch arrived in the late sixteenth century. Becoming firmly entrenched in the government and economy of Java in the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company issued coinage in its own name, though written here in Arabic script on one side of the coin, while the Christian, rather than the Muslim, date appears in European numerals on the other. |
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