Abd al-Rahman I
Medallion Two is of two horse riders picking clusters of dates from a date-palm tree. These trees are primarily found in the Middle East and North Africa and may allude to the Eastern lands, or “homeland of the palm tree groves”, lost to the Abbasids—the dynasty that established Baghdad and overthrew the Syrian Umayyads. Abd al-Rahman I, who founded Umayyad rule in the Iberian Peninsula, used the tree as code in his poetry. Some scholars suggest that the intertwining branches of the tree represent the twin branches of the Umayyad dynasty of which “both prophecy and the caliphate sprang” according to Umayyad panegyrist Hasan al-Tubni.