Tabaristan, Abbasid governors. AR hemidrachm (24 mm). Anonymous, dated 134 PYE (AH 169/ 785 CE). Obverse: Sassanian-Style bust right, before face Pahlavi APZWT, behind head GDH (combined to mean roughly "may kingship increase"), in lower right margin Pahlavi APD ("excellent"), in lower left margin Arabic BAKH BAKH ("good good" or "very good"). Reverse: Sassanian-Style fire altar with two attendants, to right mint in Pahlavi TPWRSTAN (Tabaristan), to left date in Pahlavi 134 (post-Yazdegard Era). Album 73A. This coin: Purchased from Frank S. Robinson, August 2024. (note: section below contains some recycled text from a previous post of mine) Tabaristan is a region along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, which is famous to numismatists for the Sasanian-style coinage issued there for over a century after the fall of the Sasanian dynasty. The Dabuyid Ispahbads (Dabuyid is the dynastic name, Ispahbad is derived from the Persian for "army chief") claimed descent from a brother of the Sasanian king Kavad I (488-531 AD). Dabuya was formally confirmed as ruler of the region by the last Sasanian king, Yazdegard III (632-651 AD). The rest of Persia was absorbed into the expanding Rashidun Caliphate in 651 AD with the killing of Yazdegard III. The Dabuyids gave nominal allegiance to the Caliphate, but retained effective independence (and their Zoroastrian religion). In 716-17 Farrukhan was able to repel a large invasion by Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, the Umayyad governor of Persia. Farrukhan was succeeded by his son Dadburzmihr, who seems to have accomplished little and died young. He was succeeded by his young son Khurshid, who had a regent for the first seven years of his reign as he was still a child when he took the throne. Tabaristan was reportedly quite prosperous during this period. Khurshid tried to break his ties to the Caliphate (perhaps encouraged by the chaos of the Abbasid revolution), but in 759 AD the victorious Abbasids launched another invasion of Tabaristan, and in 761, faced with defeat, Khurshid killed himself, ending the dynasty. Tabaristan was then absorbed as a province of the Abbasid Caliphate, under a governor loyal to the Caliph. The Tabaristan series forms an interesting subset in a collection of Arab-Sasanian coins. The coins are half the weight of a Sasanian drachm and are thus usually called hemidrachms today, though there is some textual evidence that they were actually called "Tabari dirhams" at the time. While there were only three Dabuyid rulers who issued coins, there are at least 14 Abbasid governors (plus an anonymous type) who continued the same basic design until about 793 AD. Among the Dabuyids, coins of Khurshid seem to be the most common, followed by those of Farrukhan; Dadburzmihr's coinage is somewhat scarce. For the Abbasid governors, some are quite common while others are very rare. There is considerable overlap in the dates of different governors, and there are governors who issued coins at the same time as the anonymous APZWT type. As the portraits are not distinctive (except for one Abbasid governor, Sulayman, who replaced the portrait with the word bakh ("good") out of respect for the Islamic prohibition on graven images), it is crucial to read the king/governor's name and/or the date in order to correctly attribute these coins. This coin is of the anonymous APZWT type, issued from 780 to 793 CE and normally quite common. However, this is a rare variety where in the obverse lower left margin, instead of the usual Pahlavi NYKW ("good") the inscription is in Arabic and reads "BAKH BAKH" ("very good"). This variety is only known for the years 134 and 135 PYE, and is rated as "Rare" in Album's checklist. I don't know the reason behind the brief shift to Arabic for just that one portion of the legend. Nevertheless, it's an interesting addition to my Tabaristan sub-sub-collection, and I was glad to get it. Please post your Tabaristan coins, or whatever else you have that is related.
