Owner Comments:
The Crusaders struck this coin in imitation of the prevailing accepted gold currency of the times: the Fatimid dinar of al Amir. See the previous coin for an example. Western Europe hadn't had gold coinage of its own for a few hundred years, and in the middle east they didn't take junk silver.
Crusaders established kingdoms in Palestine, including the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and began minting gold coins. These coins were copies of Moslem Fatimid coins, down to the Kufic legends promoting Islam as the true religion. Woops - Wait till the Pope finds out!
Kufic was a form of Arabic writing used at the time. Most of the copies used the design of the Fatimid king al-Amir who ruled AD 1101-1130. The first coins were direct copies, as time went on the legends became less clear.
The First Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187, when it was almost entirely overrun by Saladin. The "opening date" for the minting of these bezants is 1148, the year the Second Crusade arrived along with crusading kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. The "closing date" is the fall of Acre to Saladin in 1187. Acre is where these are believed to have been struck.