Armah

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Armah (c.614) was a king of Axum. He is primarily known through the coins minted during his reign, [A letter to Antoine d'Abbadie, dated 8 January 1869, mentions a coin of this ruler. Sven Rubenson, "Acta Aethiopica, vol 3: Internal Rivalries and Foreign Threats, 1869-1879" (Addis Ababa: University Press, 2000), p. 3] although it has been suggested as long ago as 1895 that he was identical to Ashama ibn Abjar, who gave shelter to the Muslim emigrants around 615-6 at Axum.

Munro-Hay states that either he or Gersem were the last Axumite kings to issue coins. In either case, no gold coins of Armah have been found, and Munro-Hay speculates that "he had accepted that there was no purpose in producing them, as his kingdom was by now at least in part cut off from the Byzantine trade network."

Armah's silver coins have an unusual reverse, showing a structure with three crosses, the middle one gilded, that Munro-Hay quotes W.R.O. Hahn as suggesting that this refers to the Holy Sepulchre, as a reference to the Persian capture of Jerusalem in 614; if this is correct, it provides a date for Armah. [This article is based on S. C. Munro-Hay's discussion in his "Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity" (Edinburgh: University Press, 1991), p. 91.]

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