½ Dinar – City of Marrakesh

In 1794, Marrakesh, the southern capital of the Alaouite Sultanate, operated within a complex and often fragmented monetary system characteristic of pre-modern Morocco. The city’s economy was underpinned by a bimetallic system of gold and silver, but the primary unit of account and most common medium of exchange was the silver dirham. However, the actual coinage in circulation was a chaotic mix. Alongside freshly minted coins from the sultan’s imperial workshops (dar al-sikka), there circulated a vast array of older, worn, and clipped coins from previous reigns and even foreign currencies, most notably Spanish silver reales (pieces of eight) from trade across the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The value of these coins was not strictly by face but by their actual weight and assessed silver purity, requiring money changers (sarrafs) at the souks to be essential intermediaries for every significant transaction.

This monetary heterogeneity was exacerbated by the political context. Sultan Moulay Slimane, who ascended to the throne in 1792, faced internal rebellions and regional dissent, which strained the central treasury's ability to control the currency supply consistently. Provincial caids and local powers sometimes issued their own coinage, further diluting monetary unity. The result was chronic instability in exchange rates between coin types and frequent shortages of sound currency, leading to periods of hoarding and inflation that disrupted the vibrant trade of Marrakesh’s famed markets, where caravans from the Sahara met goods from Europe and the wider Islamic world.

Consequently, daily commercial life in the city relied heavily on trust, negotiation, and the expertise of the sarrafs. Major wholesale trade and state finances were often conducted in gold benduqi dinars or weighed quantities of silver bullion to bypass the problem of small coin variability. For the common artisan or shopper, however, transactions involved careful scrutiny of each silver coin. This unstable environment reflected the broader challenges of Alaouite central authority, where control over currency was a key symbol of sovereignty that remained imperfectly enforced in a city like Marrakesh, balancing between imperial command and its own powerful mercantile and tribal realities.