Several traditions preserved in Arabic sources mention a Jew named Sumayr as one of the minters who produced the earliest Islamic silver coins (dirhams) during the reign of the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (r. 685–705). The coins were known as “Sumayris” because of Sumayr’s involvement in their production. One late source gives his home as Taymā’, an oasis in Arabia that had a considerable Jewish population before the advent of Islam. The sources relate the story of Sumayr along with others, involving Muslims, in ways which are atomized and…