Featured Sasanian coin from scarce mint (or is it the denomination?)

To go along with the Parthian AE drachm of Vardanes I that I posted last week, here's another coin with some mystery over where it was struck. This time it's a Sasanian AR drachm:

Sasanian Persia. AR drachm. Hormazd IV (579-590 AD), Royal Year uncertain. Mintmark ZwZwN (see explanation below). Obverse: Crowned bust of king right, name and titles before and behind. Reverse: Zoroastrian fire-altar with two attendants, star and crescent above, to right mintmark in Pahlavi ZwZwN, to left date (unread). This coin: Purchased from Allen G. Berman at the Baltimore Whitman coin show, November 2019.

Hormazd IV was the son of Khusro I (531-579 AD); his mother was the daughter of a foreign khagan, though whether it was the Turkish or Khazar khagan seems to be in dispute. Hormazd clashed often with the nobles and the Zoroastrian religious leaders, and is said to have ordered the executions of over 13,000 of his noble and religious opponents. He fought a series of minor battles against the Byzantines in the 580s, but the main military highlights of his rule came from the east. In 588 he sent a force under general Vahram Chobin to repel the Turkish forces that had conquered Balkh. Vahram was spectacularly successful, driving back the Turks and acquiring new territory, killing the Turkish khagan and capturing his son, and seizing a huge quantity of gold and other plunder. Unfortunately, the glory of Vahram made Hormazd jealous of his subordinate, and in 589 he had Vahram humiliated and removed from office. Vahram began to raise a rebellion, which inspired a palace plot to depose, blind and kill Hormazd and place his son Khusro on the throne. The rather opportunistic Vahram now declared himself the avenger of Hormazd and marched against Khusro, which did not end well for Vahram.

This coin is of decent quality for Hormazd IV's drachms, which usually feature weakly-struck areas. However, I bought it mainly for its mintmark, ZwZwN, which was correctly noted on the holder as being fairly rare. This mintmark was used only during the reign of Hormazd IV, and like many Sasanian mintmarks its interpretation has been disputed. One attribution assigns this to Zuzan or Zozan, which is a small city that still exists in Khorasan Province in eastern Iran. The modern "city" is a village with a population of just over 2,000, and from what little I could find the ancient city does not seem to have ever been very large or important. Thus, it sounds plausible that a mint could have operated here for just a short time before being abandoned.

However, there is a view that ZwZwN may actually be intended as the denomination. In the early centuries AD, "zuz" (plural "zuzim") was used in Jewish sources as the name for a silver coin, which could be a drachm or denarius depending on the local situation. This is found in the Talmud and in some letters written during the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135 AD), and the word is still used in the Passover Haggadah, in a song that mentions a goat "which Father bought for two zuzim". There was a significant Jewish population in Sasanian-era Persia, so it seems plausible that a Jewish word for a silver coin could have entered wider usage and even been used on an official issue. Nonetheless, I have my doubts. It seems odd that a denomination would be added, on just a very small minority of the coinage, where none had ever seemed necessary before, and that it should replace the mintmark, which had been a standard feature on Sasanian coins for almost two hundred years by this point. Interestingly, Stephen Album's Checklist of Islamic Coins lists an "Arab-Armenian" type, E97, that does include the "mintmark" ZWZWN and which he believes may be intended as a denomination akin to the Jewish "Zuz". However, on closer inspection it is clear that this is a different coin type. E97 is based on the winged-crown coinage of Khusro II and has "Muhammad" in Arabic script before the bust, while my coin has the normal portrait for Hormazd IV (including his giant fish-eye) and has the standard Pahlavi for "Hormazd" in front of the bust. As there are no other "Arab-Sasanian" types known to have used coins of Hormazd IV as prototypes, while Khusro II's coinage was the basis of a number of Arab-Sasanian varieties, it seems to me that the Hormazd IV ZWZWN coinage is an entirely separate type from the E97 coins, and it is coincidental that a disused earlier mintmark from a city a thousand miles away from Armenia happened to use the same three letters.

Of course, these are just my (very amateurish) speculations. I would be very interested to hear from more knowledgeable Sasanian collectors, or anyone who has additional data about this type. As always, please post your relevant coins here.

 

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I am of no help but great addition & writeup.

 

Not into the mints as much on these, (or any ancient coins really). However, aren't Sasanian coins noted for occasionally having more than one name for a mint? I wonder what the possibility of this leader either renaming an existing mint city, or having one of the workshops in a larger city with a different mintmark. I would find it unlikely that an insignificant town was given minting privileges like this unless there was something going on nearby that required fresh coinage.

It would be where my mind first went if thinking about such a conundrum, but just speculation.