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Message:: [QUOTE="+VGO.DVCKS, post: 5282153, member: 110504"][USER=93416]@EWC3[/USER], I did hear back from Alan DeShazo.  May the record show that, while he's something of a numismatic and linguistic polymath (cf. his contributions to academia.edu), he didn't have an opinion on this subject; he's only citing people in his acquaintance.  He wrote someone, who weighed in as follows (from his forward of the email). "Hi, the point of the story is that a Jew named Sumayr, "little charmer," explained everything to al-Hajjaj: how to make good coins, and how to make a set of weights to weigh them. I believe it was composed as an attempt to explain a coin nickname, sumayri, applied, it seems, to some of the Arab-Sasanian dirhams. I'm working on it a bit, trying not to. So far I found the story only in French and Arabic. The earliest version we have seems to be in a legal text by al-Mawardi written in the first half of the eleventh century, that is about 350 years after the purported event, but it's unlikely that al-Mawardi composed it himself." I'm a little nervous about citing the source, without checking in with Alan (...and the sender) again.  Sorry if that amounts to erring, literally, on the side of caution.  And Yes, I can always do that.It's the kind of story anyone would wish is true.  Alan has written me about the way the Sassanians themselves, no less than the early Caliphates, appointed Jews to high levels of adminstrative office.[/QUOTE]