Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Parthicus, post: 3006269, member: 81887&quot;]I&#039;m slowly working through my recent auction wins, as I get the time to photograph ten and properly write them up.&nbsp; At this rate, by the time I finish this batch I will have won some more.&nbsp; Anyway, here&#039;s a win from the most recent Stephen Album auction:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]744903[/ATTACH] </p><p>Arab-Sasanian, Eastern Sistan series.&nbsp; AR drachm (3.43 g).&nbsp; Anonymous Khusro type, dated AH 98 (716/7 AD).&nbsp; Obverse: Slightly crude copy of Sasanian drachm of Khusro II including his name in Pahlavi script; in margin, Arabic text &quot;bismillah rabbi&quot; (&quot;in the name of God, the Lord&quot;).&nbsp; Reverse: Standard Khusro II reverse type, to right Pahlavi mintmark SK (Sakastan), to left date 98 [AH] in Pahlavi.&nbsp; Album 77, cf. Mitchiner WoI 296.&nbsp; Stephen Album Auction 30, lot 159.</p><p><br /></p><p>As most of you already know, the first Islamic silver coins closely copied drachms of the Sasanian Persian empire they had just conquered, usually with the addition of short legends in Arabic giving a brief Muslim religious quote and/or the name of a governor.&nbsp; In the year 79 AH (698 AD), a currency reform led to the first &quot;post-reform&quot; silver dirhams being struck.&nbsp; The new dirhams had a standardized format of a set religious text (the Kalima) in the center, with inscriptions around the edges giving the date and place of minting.&nbsp; These dirhams quickly became the only silver coins struck in most of the caliphate, but some areas around the edges took longer to stop issuing Sasanian-based coins.&nbsp; Tabaristan, along the Caspian Sea, was still issuing Sasanian-style half-drachms until the 790s AD, and &quot;Arab-Bukharan&quot; coins in the name of the caliph Al-Mahdi (775-785 AD) are famous even to casual collectors of Islamic coins.&nbsp; Less well-known are the drachms struck in Sistan from the 690s to 780s AD.&nbsp; Sistan (also called Sakastan and Sijistan) was a province on the eastern frontier of the Sasanian empire, which covered parts of what is now eastern Iran, southern Afghanistan, and western Pakistan.&nbsp; The last Sasanian king, Yazdegard III, fled from the advancing Muslim armies to this province, where he was eventually killed in 651 AD, and (with a couple of brief rebellions) the province was soon absorbed into the Rashidun, and then the succeeding Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>It is not known for certain why Arab-Sasanian coins continued to be struck so late in Sistan; maybe it was because the coins were more accepted in trade, especially with tribes outside the Muslim Caliphate who were very used to Sasanian silver coins and may have taken a long time to trust those weird, new image-less coins.&nbsp; This coin has a somewhat degraded but still recognizable Sasanian design; later issues in the series have an almost cartoonish quality.&nbsp; (The later issues are also quite rare, I am still trying to acquire one.)&nbsp; This specimen has a few areas of corrosion, but it is still an interesting relic of the early Islamic world.&nbsp; Please post your related coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in