Harun al-Rashid

Robert Kool, a coin expert at IAA, said one of the coins appears to date to the 8th or 9th century, between 786 and 809 A.D., during the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid.

In 796, the caliph Harun al-Rashid moved the seat of the Muslim Empire to the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, on the banks of the Euphrates.

Some suggest promoting the city not just as Imam Reza’s burial place, but also Harun al-Rashid’s, the eighth century caliph who presided over the golden age of Sunni Islam.

Just listen: “They say that Harun al-Rashid was very restless one night and summoned Masrur , his executioner. When he arrived quickly the caliph told him that he could not sleep and wanted him to fetch so meone to tell him a ­story . . . ”

“I was tearful when I saw the damage. So much history was destroyed,” he said, while surveying an eighth-century pot hailing from the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, which one of Moneim’s apprentices had been painstakingly patching up for three months.