1 Sacred Cubes within Sacred Spheres The numismatic symbolic system that traveled to the East Salvador Peña-Martín (Universidad de Málaga) [Pre-print of Peña-Martín, Salvador, “Sacred Cubes within Sacred Spheres: The numismatic symbolic system that traveled to the East”, in Meouak, Mohamed, and Puente, Cristina (eds.), Connected Stories: Contacts, traditions and transmissions in Premodern Mediterranean Islam, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2022 (ISBN: 978-3-11-077256-2), pp. 160-193 (https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110773651-006).] “Desde los cubos de la Alhambra se ve el Albayzín” (“From the cubes of the Alhambra one can see the Albayzín”) Federico García Lorca Abstract The Almohad design of coins, combining squares and circles, spread from the Western part of the Islamic realm into the Eastern one, where it lasted for centuries. But why did the Almohads strike square coins or coins with squares inscribed in circles? After a critical state of the question and an exam of the explanations provided so far, attention is paid to the idea that Almohad square coins could have been regarded as protective objects. The quest leads then to the consideration that the model of the Quran, whose copies were square-shaped in Almohad and post-Almohad period, might point to the cubical shape of the Kaʻba, providing us with an answer to the initial question consisting in the sacred value granted to a system of geometrical symbols. This model of coins, plenty of sacred references, allusions and implications, is to be understood in reference to their own historical circumstances, but, paradoxically, was adopted in different historical contexts since it was imitated by Eastern Islamic dynasties. Key words coins, Almohads, legitimacy, influence, Quran, al-Kaʻba, symbols, apotropaism, cosmologies, 1. The fact Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn an-Nāṣir I, the Ayyubid ruler, started issuing, in the middle of the 6 th century Hijra/middle of the 12 th CE, a numismatic novelty (visually) in the Middle East ‒silver coins whose main feature was the prominent use of squares inscribed in circles, similar to the one shown in Figure 01, a dirham struck in Damascus in 578/1182-