Justinian II was the son of Constantine IV, and thereby great-grandson of the Herakleian dynasty's founder, Herakleios. He bacame senior emperor on the death of his father in 685. In 690/691, Justinian convened the ecclesiatical Council in Trullo, also known as the Quinisext Council. Concurrently or slightly before the council, sometime between 689 and 691, the image of Christ appeared on regular issues of the gold and silver coinage of Constantinople. According to the ninth-century authors Theophanes and Baladhuri (writing in Greek and Arabic respectively), the appearance of christ on the Byzantine coinage is related to the Emperor's poor relations with the Umayyad Caliph, 'Abd al-Malik, whose own innovations on the Arabic coinage are of great numismatic significance. Justinian was deposed in 695 and, after having his nose cut off and his tongue slit, was exiled to Cherson in the Crimea. He escaped exile, however, and returned to Constantinople in 705 backed by his new brother-in-law, the Khazar khagan. Justinian was deposed for a second time in 711 and killed.

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