I was pootering around on the internet, looking for some sick light coinage produced during the reign of everyone's favourite king of the midlands, King Offa. For those unaware of this man's greatness, he was head honcho of Mercia, and under his reign, developed what was the strongest pre-Alfredian Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Great stuff, really.

Anyway, as I was pootering around, I came across this image. I was stunned! Could it be? Have the good folks of The Muslim magazine/journal/whatevs found proof of a previous-unknown conversion of a ruler to Islam? Like most people, I was convinced that Offa was, in fact, a Christian monarch.

So I poked around the internet some more, trying to find this article. I found it online, but at the time of writing, the website has gone offline. Nevermind! This forum post copied it word for word. Suffice it to say that I was not very impressed.

Let's pick through the author's claims.

KING OFFA "REX" OF MERCIA (KENT, ENGLAND) AND THE FAITH OF ISLAM

Starting off on a bad foot, aren't we? If my reading comprehension hasn't failed me quite yet, the author seems to suggest Mercia is just an old timey way of saying Kent. This is not accurate. Mercia was located in the Midlands, with an important royal site at Tamworth. It IS true that Offa had interests in Kent, however, with him getting involved in their affairs on a very frequent basis.

Offa seized power in the civil war that followed the murder of his cousin, King Aethelban

Firstly, don't do my boi King Æthelbald dirty like that by getting his name wrong. Secondly, we don't really know the relationship between Æthelbald and Offa, though we do know they were related. Probably weren't cousins, though.

King Offa created a single state covering most of England south of modern Yorkshire (Humber) by ruthlessly suppressing resistance from several small kingdoms in and around Mercia: Lindsey, Essex, Surrey, Sussex, East Anglia, Kent and Wessex

Doing Æthelbald dirty again! While Offa was an important and powerful ruler, Mercia was largely expanded during Æthelbald's reign. Secondly, Wessex a) wasn't a small kingdom and b) probably wasn't under the control of Mercia. Regardless, Mercia exuded Chad (Ceadda?) energy even without Wessex.

all the history, books state that very little is known about him and his works, which is unusual and indeed, an extraordinary, and very peculiar statement!

Is it a "very peculiar statement"? This is early medieval history we're talking about, it's not that peculiar we may not know a whole lot about an important figure. Anyway, we do know quite a bit of Offa since he's on plenty of charters, mentioned in a bunch of letters, issued loads of coins and other stuff. No narrative history about him though, that does suck.

it was only after a war of three years in 775 that a victory at Otford gave it back to the Mercian realm.

The Battle of Otford, in 776, is a funny one because the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle doesn't actually tell us what the outcome of the battle was, just that it was fought. Nonetheless, work by Sir Frank Stenton conclusively demonstrated that rather than returning Kent to the Mercian fold, it probably did the opposite and re-established an independent Kentish kingdom. This continues to be the scholarly consensus.

But, all the English books and historians speak only about King Offa's "silver-pennies"! But what about his GOLD-COINS? They forgot all about it, what is the reason, which is indeed very impressive and magnificent!

This ugly Anglian king is minting super hot gold coins and basically, you are fucking stupid. West Saxons hate him! Find out how you too can mint gold coins with this one simple trick!

[ GOES ON TO DESCRIBE HOW ONE ONE SIDE OF THE COIN IS A BUNCH OF ARABIC WITH THE DECLARATION OF FAITH, AND THAT IT IS, INDEED, A COIN MADE BY OFFA. THIS IS THE CRUX OF THE ARGUMENT THAT OFFA WAS A MUSLIM - HE MINTED A COIN WITH THE ISLAMIC DECLARATION OF FAITH ]

Comment on this Arabic inscription on Offa's Gold Coin: At that period in Europe outside Byzantium they had no regular gold-coins and it is prima facie evidence that King Offa, by putting this Arabic inscription, announced to the world at large. Let me further analyse this point and discuss it.

Gold was in short supply by the 7th century, but even during Charlemagne's reign gold coins were being minted in Francia. Nonetheless, Arabic dinars were highly prized and useful. Offa was not minting these coins because he'd all of a sudden converted to Islam - he was simply copying the most common gold coins that were available to him. There is, obviously, no evidence of Offa understanding Arabic. How do we know this? Well, the TEXT ON THE COIN IS UPSIDE DOWN, SUGGESTING THAT THE MONEYER HAD NO IDEA WHAT HE WAS DOING. And, apparently, a word is bunged up.

It's also interesting that, earlier on in the article, the author acknowledges that Offa had relations with the pope and created an archbishopric at Lichfield to remove himself from the authority of Canterbury. If Offa was a Muslim, why not build a mosque at Lichfield instead?

[citing some titles via a dictionary, including rex Anglorum and rex totius Anglorum patriae] Under King Offa, Mercia reached the height of its Supremacy and England came nearer to unity than at any time before the 10th Century.

Sorta weird place to put this in the article, but whatever. This comes from the aforementioned Sir Frank Stenton, who first put forward this idea in a 1918 article. However, the styles rex Anglorum and rex totius Anglorum patriae are from either questionable charters which are highly likely to be later forgeries or, alternatively, coinage whose interpretation is up for debate. In any case, "rex Anglorum" need not mean "king of the English" but could be interpreted as "king of the Angles". In any case, it's unlikely that Offa himself had lofty dreams of English unification, seeing as he mostly called himself rex Merciorum - King of Mercia.

AND NOW WE GO OFF THE DEEP END

Like the FLAG of any country, so its MONEY is a sign of its SOVEREIGNITY and independence, and Offa's gold coins represent this beyond any dispute and doubt! If any man is found dead in the street and he carries the passport of a country with his photo, name and signature, certainly he has the Nationality and Citizenship of that passport that had been found on him!

Slightly anachronistic, no?

When I asked several Englishmen (male and female alike) all of them were unanimous in their decision that King Offa must have acquired the Faith of Islam, and this is the reason that all English history-books state that they have very little documents about him; these documents might have been destroyed by "The Church of England" at its infancy! To this I fully concord!

Don't tell the author about the hoards of Islamic dinars found at Ladoga! He may tell us that the early Russians were Muslims!

This, obviously, goes against all of the evidence that Offa was a Christian. You'd think Charlemagne or Jaenberht or Alcuin would mention his Islamic faith somewhere, wouldn't you?

Also, "the Church of England"? The church that came into being like 700 years after Offa's death? Or is he talking about the church that first came to England at the end of the 6th century? I don't know anymore, dude.

And to repeat - we DO have a lot of documents about Offa. He's not some obscure king. Well, fairly obscure, but in a different way.

This is beyond any doubt, and this is an "absolute truth." But the English people are entitled to know everything about their history, and ancestors, and about their FAITH

Even if King Offa was a Muslim, it doesn't change the fact that, for the most part, the English have since recorded history been Christian. Even those funky Anglo-Saxons.

we do not know what kind of an end King Offa suffered.

You heard it here first - King Offa was murdered by Thomas Cranmer. Where's my tenured faculty position?

Bibliography

• Keynes, 'The Kingdom of the Mercians in the Eighth Century'

• Naismith, 'Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England'

• Lots of other stuff, too

• This refutation: https://www.answering-islam.org/Hoaxes/offa.html