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1. A mancus, or gold dinar of the English king Offa of Mercia (757-796), a copy of the dinars of the Abbasid Caliphate (774). It combines the Latin legend OFFA REX with Arabic legends. The date of A.H. 157 (773-774 AD) is readable. British Museum.

Mancus (sometimes spelt mancosus or similar) was a term used in early medieval Europe to denote either a gold coin, a weight of gold of 4.25g (equivalent to the Islamic dinar, and thus lighter than the Byzantine solidus), or a unit of account of thirty silver pence. This made it worth about a month's wages for a skilled worker, such as a craftsman or a soldier. Distinguishing between these uses can be extremely difficult: the will of the Anglo-Saxon king Eadred, who died in 955, illustrates the problem well with its request that 'two-thousand mancuses of gold be taken and minted into mancuses' (nime man twentig hund mancusa goldes and gemynetige to mancusan).