Thanks to the generosity of our late Honorary Fellow Mr Samir Shamma, in 1992 The Royal Numismatic Society established a prize to be awarded every two years for the book or article(s) published, normally and preferably in English, during the previous three years which in the view of the Council is most useful to students of Islamic numismatics.
- The value of the prize will be £2,000.
- Nominations are also welcomed from outside of Council; these must be sent by 31st December.
- The Council reserves the right to make no award if in its opinion no work of sufficient quality is nominated.
Past winners of the Samir Shamma Prize
- 1993 G. Rispling (‘The Volgar Bulgarian imitative coinage of al-amir Yaltawar (‘Barman’) and Mikail b. Jafar’, in Sigtuna Papers New series 6, Stockholm, 1990)
- 1995 L. Ilisch (Sylloge Nummorum Arabicorum Tuebingen. Palaestina IVa Bilad ash-Sham I, Tuebingen, 1993)
- 1997 H.M. Malek (papers on Tabaristan) and R. and M. Tye (Jitals, South Uist, 1995)
- 1999 N.G. Goussous (Umayyad Coinage of Bilad al-Sham, Amman, 1996)
- 2000 S. Album (Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean Museum, 10 : Arabia and East Africa, Oxford, 1999)
- 2003 S. Goron and J. Goenka (The Coins of the Indian Sultanates, New Delhi, 2001)
- 2005 S. Heidemann (numismatic contributions to Raqqa, die Islamische Stadt, Mainz, 2003) and S. Album and A. Goodwin (Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean Museum, 1: The Pre-Reform Coinage of the Early Islamic Period, Oxford, 2002)
- 2007 Aman ur-Rahman (Zahir uddin Mahammad Babur. A Numismatic Study, Karachi, 2005) and J. Bacharach (Islamic History Through Coins: an Analysis and Catalogue of Tenth-century Ikshidid Coinage, Cairo and New York, 2006)
- 2009 Tony Goodwin (Studies in the Khalili Collection, IV: Arab-Byzantine Coinage, London, 2005)
- 2012 Giulio Bernardi (Arabic Gold Coins. Corpus, vol. I, Trieste, 2010)
- 2013 Norman ‘Doug’ Nicol (Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean Museum Volume 3 – Early ‘Abbasid Precious Metal Coinage (to 218 AH) and Volume 4 – Later ‘Abbasid Precious Metal Coinage (from 219 AH) (both Ashmolean Musuem, 2012)
- 2014 Yahya Jafar (The Seljuq Period in Baghdad 447-552 AH. A Numismatic and Historical Study, London, 2011) and Luke Treadwell (Craftsmen and Coins: Signed Dies in the Iranian World (3rd to 5th Centuries, AH), Vienna, 2011)
- 2018 Hassan al-Akra (L’histoire de Baalbek à l’époque médiévale d’après les monnaies (636-1516), (Beirut/Damascus, Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2016) and Arianna d’Ottone Rambach (La collezione di Vittorio Emanuele III – Monete arabe (Bollettino di Numismatica 35, 2015).
- 2020 Dorota Malarczyk (for her contributions to the Islamic sections of the Polish 5 part Inventory of Early Medieval Coin Hoards.)