D R H M — Dirham and Darāhim: Silver Money and a Unit of Monetary Value

1. The word’s meaning and origin

«دِرْهَم» (dirham) names a monetary unit associated in historical Arabic usage especially with a silver coin and a specified weight of silver. Its familiar plural is «دَرَاهِم» (darāhim), the form used in the Qur’anic account of Joseph.

Unlike many Qur’anic roots, this word is not originally a native Arabic derivational base. Early Arabic lexicographers call it “Arabicized Persian”: a word entering Arabic from Persian and becoming adapted to Arabic sound and morphological patterns.

The word’s history extends beyond Persian. Greek «δραχμή» (drakhmē), the name of a monetary and weight unit, entered Middle Persian as drahm. Arabic adopted dirham and formed the plural darāhim.

Two issues should therefore be distinguished. Qur’anic morphological indexes record D R H M as a quadriliteral lexical entry, but this classification does not establish an independent ancient Arabic root for the coin’s name. Dāl, rāʾ, hāʾ, and mīm represent its Arabic structure; the monetary name’s historical origin requires tracing transmission between languages.

Encyclopaedia Iranica: Greek origin and Middle Persian form

2. Linguistic forms and derivatives

The principal, familiar Arabic form is dirham. Dictionaries also record «دِرْهِم» (dirhim), with a kasrah on hāʾ, and the less common «دِرْهَام» (dirhām).

Arabic has formed several morphological structures from this name:

دِرْهَم (dirham): singular; a silver monetary unit and, in historical usage, a unit of weight.

دَرَاهِم (darāhim): the usual broken plural of dirham and the form occurring in the Qur’an.

دَرَاهِيم (darāhīm): another recorded plural, also attested in Arabic poetry, but absent from the Qur’an.

دُرَيْهِم and دُرَيْهِيم (durayhim and durayhīm): Arabic diminutives. Sībawayh gives a particular morphological explanation of durayhīm and regards it as irregular.

مُدَرْهَم (mudarham): in some sources, a man possessing many dirhams, hence someone with abundant money. Some lexicographers transmit no verb for this particular description; it should therefore not be equated without explanation with the verb concerning leaves becoming round.

دَرْهَمَ (darhama): a verb formed from the monetary name. For example, «دَرْهَمَتِ الْخُبَّازَى» (darhamati al-khubbāzā) describes a plant’s leaves becoming round, resembling dirhams in shape.

This last example matters linguistically: Arabic can form verbs and descriptions even from a borrowed noun. A verb derived from dirham therefore does not itself prove that the coin’s name had an Arabic root from the outset.

The same dictionaries also record «اِدْرَهَمَّ» (idrahamma), concerning a person’s aging or frailty, or sight becoming dim. Its placement under D R H M alone does not connect aging or darkness with the coin’s name; that would require independent evidence.

Only darāhim occurs in the Qur’an. None of these verbs, diminutives, or other forms appears in the Qur’anic text.

Lisān al-ʿArab and Tāj al-ʿArūs: borrowing, forms, and derivatives

3. Evidence from early Arabic

Arabic use of dirham is not confined to later Islamic periods. The name also appears in witnesses attributed to pre-Islamic poetry.

A poem by Jābir ibn Ḥunayy al-Taghlibī, transmitted in Al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, includes:

وَفِي كُلِّ أَسْوَاقِ الْعِرَاقِ إِتَاوَةٌ
وَفِي كُلِّ مَا بَاعَ امْرُؤٌ مَكْسُ دِرْهَمِ

wa-fī kulli aswāqi al-ʿirāqi itāwatun / wa-fī kulli mā bāʿa imruʾun maksu dirhami

That is: “In every market of Iraq a levy is taken, and on everything a man sells a dirham is demanded as a toll.”

The verse is transmitted with openings including afī kulli aswāq and wa-fī kulli aswāq. Both retain dirham in the context of trade and market levies.

Here, a dirham is a familiar monetary unit for collecting payments. The poet does not pause to define it: his purpose is to complain about market exactions, using dirham in its monetary sense.

Jamharat al-Lughah, M K S: attribution and the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt variant

Another witness, from the Umayyad poet Al-Farazdaq, preserves the plural darāhīm:

تَنْفِي يَدَاهَا الْحَصَى فِي كُلِّ هَاجِرَةٍ
نَفْيَ الدَّرَاهِيمِ تَنْقَادُ الصَّيَارِيفِ

tanfī yadāhā al-ḥaṣā fī kulli hājiratin / nafya al-darāhīmi tanqādu al-ṣayārīfi

The image may be rendered: “The camel’s forefeet scatter pebbles at every scorching noon, as an expert money changer shifts dirhams while examining coins.” The poetic comparison likens the displacement of pebbles to coins moving and separating in money changers’ hands.

This witness helps establish a plural form and a figurative use. Since Al-Farazdaq lived in the Islamic period, however, it should not be presented as independent evidence of pre-Qur’anic Arabic.

Lisān al-ʿArab: Al-Farazdaq’s witness and Ibn Barrī’s explanation

Together, the witnesses show that, after entering Arabic, dirham was not simply a foreign name confined to one text. It participated in the language of trade, taxation, money changing, and literary comparison, and acquired Arabic morphological forms.

4. The Qur’anic occurrence in Joseph’s story

Darāhim occurs only once in the Qur’an, in Yūsuf 12:20:

Quranic Arabic Corpus: the sole occurrence in Yūsuf 12:20

Yūsuf 12:20

وَشَرَوْهُ بِثَمَنٍ بَخْسٍ دَرَاهِمَ مَعْدُودَةٍ وَكَانُوا فِيهِ مِنَ الزَّاهِدِينَ

wa-sharawhu bi-thamanin bakhsin darāhima maʿdūdatin wa-kānū fīhi mina al-zāhidīna

Proposed Persian translation, rendered here in English:

“They sold him for a paltry price, a few counted dirhams, and had little desire for him.”

Several expressions appear together here, each with a separate role.

«بِثَمَنٍ» (bi-thamanin) concerns the price received in exchange for handing Joseph over. «بَخْسٍ» (bakhsin) describes that price as deficient, diminished, or disproportionate to the actual worth. «دَرَاهِمَ» (darāhima) identifies the monetary units in which the price is expressed; «مَعْدُودَةٍ» (maʿdūdatin) describes them as counted.

Study of B KH S

Grammatically, darāhima can be a substitute, or badal, for thamanin: the kind of payment is specified after its price is mentioned. Despite the final fatḥah, the noun is genitive under this analysis, rather than accusative. Darāhim follows faʿālil, one of the ultimate broken-plural patterns, and is diptotic: when indefinite and outside a construct phrase, it takes fatḥah rather than kasrah in the genitive. Maʿdūdatin is its genitive adjective.

Al-Muʿjam al-Mufaṣṣal fī al-Naḥw al-ʿArabī: faʿālil and diptotic inflection

Maʿdūdah directly means counted. In context, its association with bakhs points to the smallness of the price; the adjective itself nevertheless gives no exact number of dirhams.

Study of ʿ D D

Commentaries transmit differing figures, including twenty, twenty-two, and forty dirhams. None appears in the verse, and maʿdūdah cannot establish any one of them conclusively.

Some historical explanations state that small sums were counted while larger sums were weighed. This may illuminate the expression’s background, but the verse establishes no specific threshold for counting or weighing dirhams.

Al-Basīṭ: substitution, differing counts, and counting dirhams

Another distinction is needed between narrative terminology and identification of a historical coin. The Qur’an relates Joseph’s story using a monetary word familiar to its Arabic-speaking audience. That alone does not establish that a coin with the precise shape, official name, weight, or minting system of later dirhams existed in Joseph’s historical period.

Identifying the currency of a historical period requires independent archaeological and economic-historical evidence. The word’s meaning in the verse is clear; its numismatic details exceed the Qur’an’s explicit information.

The closing phrase «وَكَانُوا فِيهِ مِنَ الزَّاهِدِينَ» (wa-kānū fīhi mina al-zāhidīna) completes the atmosphere of disinterest and treating the transaction’s subject as of little importance. Commentaries discuss the pronouns’ referents and the sellers’ identity in relation to earlier verses; these disagreements do not change darāhim itself.

Dirham here is neither a term measuring a human being’s moral worth nor a hidden symbolic meaning. It denotes money used in the transaction. Condemnation of the conduct and the paltry price arise from the whole context and accompanying expressions.

5. Dirham, price, dinar, and worth

Studying the word requires distinguishing money, price, and worth.

Dirham names a particular monetary unit. Thaman is a price assigned or paid in exchange for something and can be expressed in different monetary units. A dirham can therefore form part of a price, but a price need not consist of dirhams.

Study of TH M N

«دِينَار» (dīnār) is another monetary unit named in the Qur’an, in Āl ʿImrān 3:75. Historically, dinars have been associated with gold money and dirhams with silver money. The two names should not be treated as synonyms or their relative value assumed constant across all places and periods.

A person’s or object’s worth is also not identical with the monetary unit named in a transaction. In Joseph’s story, darāhim supplies the units expressing the price; its smallness and unfairness emerge from bakhs, maʿdūdah, and the narrative situation.

Darāhima therefore need not be translated as “little worth,” “worthlessness,” or “an unfair price.” Those ideas may belong to an analysis of the whole verse, but the direct meaning of darāhim remains dirhams.

6. Conclusion and translation proposal

Dirham is a monetary name of non-Arabic origin that entered Arabic’s linguistic structure, acquiring plurals, diminutives, and descriptive and verbal derivatives. Its known history reaches back to Greek drakhmē and Middle Persian drahm.

Arabic dictionaries associate the name mainly with silver coinage and a weight of silver. Figurative uses, such as a plant’s leaves becoming round, arise from resemblance to a coin’s shape. Forms such as idrahamma concerning aging or dim sight are also recorded, but their historical connection with the monetary name is unproven.

The Qur’an uses this family only as the plural darāhima in Yūsuf 12:20. Its meaning there is concrete and clear: dirhams in which the transaction’s price is expressed.

Brief root meaning: Dirham: a silver monetary unit and, in historical usage, a weight of silver.

Meaning of Qur’anic darāhima: Dirhams; the monetary units named as the transaction’s price.

Translation proposal: “A few counted dirhams,” or, more fluently, “a few dirhams.”

In translating the full verse, “a paltry price” should represent bi-thamanin bakhsin, rather than an addition to darāhim itself.