Dirham

[billyshears]

Why is the UAE "Dirham" so called? Any clues on the origin of the word?

[dzug]

Don't know the origins but other Arabic countries also have dirhams - eg Morocco

[08012006]

OED below indicates it may be a corruption of drachma

An Arabian measure of weight, originally two-thirds of an Attic drachma (44�4 grains troy), used with varying weight from Morocco to Abyssinia, Turkey, and Persia; in Egypt (1895) = 47�661 troy grains. Also a small silver coin of the same weight, used under the caliphs, and (1895) in Morocco, where its value was less than 4d. English.

1788 GIBBON Decl. & F. lii. V. 397 note, Elmacin..compared the weight of the best or common gold dinar, to the drachm or dirhem of Egypt. 1850 W. IRVING Mahomet xxxix. (1853) 199 Omar Ibn Al Hareth declares that Mahomet, at his death, did not leave a golden dinar nor a silver dirhem. 1872 E. W. ROBERTSON Hist. Ess. 3 In Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Barbary and Arabia, the Dirhem, as a standard of weight, continues at the present day to be divided into 16 killos, or carats, and 64 grains. Ibid. 48 note, The drachma of Constantinople..the original of the Egyptian dirhem. 1885 BURTON Arab. Nts. (1887) III. 36, I now adjudge him the sum of ten thousand dirhams. 1970 New Yorker 29 Aug. 48/2 There were ten dirhams in her pocket. 1971 Ashmolean Mus. Rep. of Visitors 1970 43 The purchase of a group of silver dirhams of the �Arab-Sasanian� type.