I offer to your Lordship and the Society a short Paper on the origin and antiquity, use and advantage of Cufic Coins.

Wheresoever the arms and religion of the disciples of Mahomed have forced their way, coins that have Arabic titles, whether struck in Syria, Persia, Africa, Spain, or Arabia, are called Mahometan. The most ancient of these are said to be Cufic, because their legends are written in Cufic letters, that is, in characters first used in Cufa, a city of Mesopotamia, and first employed in transcribing the Koran for the space of three hundred years, and for inscriptions on stones and coins for three hundred more, to the 13th century of the Christian æra.