Bassam Barakat Antiquities

Description

VANDALS.

VANDALS. Municipal coinage of Carthage, Circa 480-533 AD.  Æ 4 Nummi, Struck circa 523-533.
Obv: Diademed, draped, and cuirassed bust left; palm to left.
REV: N/ IIII in two lines. (mark of value) very good condition and Very nice patina.
Ref:Hahn, Wertsystem 16; MEC 1, 51-6; BMC Vandals 12-14.

The Vandals were a large East Germanic tribe or group of tribes that first appear in history inhabiting present-day southern Poland. Some later moved in large numbers, including most notably the group which successively established Vandal kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula, on western Mediterranean islands and in North Africa in the 5th century.

The traditional view has been that the Vandals migrated from southern Scandinavia to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula rivers during the 2nd century BC and settled in Silesia from around 120 BC.

They are associated with the Przeworsk culture and were possibly the same people as the Lugii.

Expanding into Dacia during the Marcomannic Wars and to Pannonia during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Vandals were confined to Pannonia by the Goths around 330 AD, where they received permission to settle from Constantine the Great.

Around 400, raids by the Huns forced many Germanic tribes to migrate into the territory of the Roman Empire, and fearing that they might be targeted next the Vandals were pushed westwards, crossing the Rhine into Gaul along with other tribes in 406.

In 409 the Vandals crossed the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, where their main groups, the Hasdingi and the Silingi, settled in Gallaecia (northwest Iberia) and Baetica (south-central Iberia) respectively.

On the orders of the Romans, the Visigoths invaded Iberia in 418. They almost wiped out the Iranian Alans and Silingi Vandals who voluntarily subjected themselves to the rule of Hasdingian leader Gunderic, who was pushed from Gallaecia to Baetica by a Roman-Suebi coalition in 419. In 429, under king Genseric (reigned 428–477), the Vandals entered North Africa.

By 439 they established a kingdom which included the Roman province of Africa as well as Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearic Islands. They fended off several Roman attempts to recapture the African province, and sacked the city of Rome in 455.

Their kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4, in which Emperor Justinian I’s forces reconquered the province for the Eastern Roman Empire.