Transitional coin: Arab-Sasanian

If you are really interested in reading Arabic coins and can afford to part with 50 or 60 dollars.

The book is also available digitally through Amazon Kindle for 10 dollars.

 

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Yea but the Arab Sassanian coins have other script than arabic called pahlavi script i believe. I dont know any book or online resource on that.

 

I would love to give an opinion, but I don't collect these and thus know nothing about them. BTW, welcome to CT.

 

Thanks for offering your warm welcome. I am new collector and started to collect greek roman and islamic coins. But find islamic ones specially arab-sassanian very challenging to read and attribute

 

Hormazd VI, AR Drachm,
Facing bust, head right, wearing winged crown with star and crescent, inside double dotted-border, crescents with stars at 3, 6 and 9 o'clock
Fire altar with two attendants, crescents on heads, inside triple dotted-border, crescents with stars at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o'clock
Göbl SN, Hormizd V

I'm uncertain of the year and mintmark. You can try to look it up from this site.

https://www.beastcoins.com/Sasanian/Sasanian.htm

 

Hello @arashpour, and welcome! I am not an expert in this series (I just got started collecting Arab-Sasanian coins), but I will give it a try. I don't see anything suspicious about your coin, and Ziyad b. Abi Sufyan is listed as one of the more common types, so I will give your coin the okay. The mintmark is BN, which is an uncertain site in Kirman province. I'm less sure about the year- possibly 47, but it seems to be missing a few letters? Maybe someone else has a better opinion. Anyway, thanks for sharing.

 

@icerain: I am puzzled by your attribution to Hormazd V or VI- the script in front of the face is a bit hard to read, but it looks nothing like Hormazd's name, and the marginal inscription of "Bismillah rabbi" is unmistakably Muslim.

 

Thanks @Parthicus Which letter you think is missing? Would it mean it fake? real shouldnt have missing letters

 

I'm pretty new to them as well. I was looking mostly at coins similar in design on the site. Sorry that I was wrong, I'm still learning to ID these myself. Once I get the book by Gobl in hand I'm going tp dig further and hopefully learn more in ID'ing these type of coins.

 

@icerain: No problem, identifying these coins is a real challenge. While looking carefully at the portrait (especially the crown) and other design details is a good strategy for identifying coins in the main Sasanian series, for Arab-Sasanian coins it can lead only to perdition; you have to buckle down and read the inscriptions. Which are in a combination of Arabic and Pahlavi, sometimes poorly inscribed, and with the normal fact that Pahlavi was clearly designed by someone who hated readers and wanted to make them suffer . Gobl is great for the main Sasanian series, but doesn't include Arab-Sasanian (unless he wrote another book that I don't know about). For Arab-Sasanian, I have been struggling along with Mitchiner, Album, and Richard Plant's "Arabic Coins and How to Read Them" (plugged by Sallent above), supplemented by various online resources. If you find a good single-volume book for Arab-Sasanian coins, let me know!

 

After further research, I don't think there are any letters missing, just my knowledge of the series is missing . So, let me fully explain my conclusions about the date.

First, I checked Stephen Album's "Checklist of Islamic Coins" for Ziyad b. Abi Sufyan. Album says that his coins are dated 47 and 50-55, rarely 49; plus, coins from Darabjird mint (DA) have the frozen date 43. Since your coin is not from Darabjird, we can rule out 43; that leaves us 47, 49, and 50-55.

Next, I went to the following website:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Sasanian Dates
to try and read the date. Unfortunately, that site only lists years up to 48. If you compare the date on your coin to 47, it does look a bit similar, but with some letters missing.

But, I shouldn't have been so quick to assume it was a badly-engraved 47. I then decided to do a Google Image search on "Ziyad b. Sufyan" and looked at the dates attributed to the coins that came up. If you look at the second and third coins that come up, the date looks almost exactly like your coin (no letters missing, but the last one is a bit hard to see clearly), and those two coins are assigned to 52 and 53. I think 53 fits a bit better, but I am not comfortable saying for sure. Maybe you can look up a few more examples and try to narrow it down?

 

@Parthicus You are great. I am impressed by the research you did and the link you sent. I also found below:

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1897420

Do you think this is the right one? If yes why mine the weight is 3.6 but the one in image is 2.56? What is the weight range for these series? Someone told me Arab-Sassanian in general are from 4.1 to 3.8 mine is 3.6 I havent seend this before. What is your thought? The weight is one of the reasons made me worried on authenticity...

 

@arashpour: Good question on the weight. A major problem with using weight of Arab-Sasanian coins to determine authenticity is that many (but not all) of them have been clipped, sometimes to bring them down to the weight of a post-reform dirham, sometimes just to steal a bit of extra silver. I looked up coins of Ziyad b. Abi Sufyan online, and here are the weights of the first 16 coins I found:
2.7, 2.97, 2.54, 4.0, 3.77, 3.13, 4.15, 2.26, 3.94, 2.89, 3.07, 3.06, 4.11, 3.88, 2.76, 3.30. From this, we get an average weight (mean +/- SD) of 3.28 +/- 0.61g. Of course, the exact figure will change a bit if we add more coins to our sample size, but your piece is well within what we could reasonably expect (allowing for clipping, minor variation in initial weight, and changes due to preservation- crystallization of silver into "horn silver" can cause greatly decreased weight.)

If you are still worried about authenticity, you should probably have an expert examine the coin in person. (I am just an amateur in this series, and there are limits to what anyone can tell from photos.) I know that Stephen Album used to offer a low-cost attribution/authenticity opinion if you mailed a coin to him (with advance notice), not sure if he still does but you can check his website to find out.

 

Hi Guys

Do you have any opinion on this Arab sasanian coin in terms of authenticity ? the coin look very fragile and kind of feels its hollow . feels like made of some sort of plastic with silvery color not sure if it is silver or fake??
I really appreciate your opinion.

Also I got 2 sasanian coin one is from Ardeshir 1 . It looks porous. Is it due to crystallization? Is it authentic?

The other sasanian coin is from hormizd 2

Thanks again guys. I am a newbie collector and very hard to recognize fake and authentic for me. Please help me

 

This may be an impostor. it is not in very good shape and the pictures are not that great. It has a few countermarks. Two of them are very clear.

 

Great Thread about a very interesting series of coins. I wonder how they prepared the blanks for these very large thin coins. How did they cut off such thin sections from a bar or perhaps they were cut out of a sheet?

 

The last coin shown is not really an impostor. But a later type inspired by the Sasanian coins. It was issued under the Yabghu of Tokharistan.
Last year quite a few came on the market. Some experts have expressed their concern about their authenticity. From the photo i would have doubts, but that may be different in hand.
Here one of mine:


And a related one, now from Zabulistan (yes these places do exist):

 

Hey guys

What is your opinion on my coins?

 

It is always difficult to judge from a photo, but i see no major red flags that would indicate these are fake.
For comparison here another Hormazd:

 

Thanks @THCoins is the script the same? I feel there are some differences between the one you posted and mine. Also do what do you think on Arab Sasanian one? That one feel like so hollow kind of like a ceramic with silver coated color. Not sure even its metal or not.