Since I've now completed the full set of Dabuyid rulers (all three of them), it seemed like an appropriate time to share. The last coin is one I posted two years ago (but misidentified at the time), the first two are new. Tabaristan. Dabuyids. AR hemidrachm (24 mm, 2.06 g). Farrukhan (711-731 AD), Year 76 Post-Yazdegard Era (727/8 AD). Obverse: Sassanian-style bust right, name of king in Pahlavi before. Reverse: Zoroastrian fire-altar, mint name TAPWRSTAN to right, date to left. Album 50, Mitchiner WOI 274v. This coin: Pars Coins Auction 7 (July 14, 2020), lot 311. Tabaristan. Dabuyids. AR hemidrachm (24 mm, 1.98 g). Dadburzmihr (731-739 AD), Year 87 Post-Yazdegard Era (738/9 AD). Obverse: Sassanian-style bust right, name of king in Pahlavi before. Reverse: Zoroastrian fire-altar, mint name TAPWRSTAN to right, date to left. Album 51. This coin: Pars Coins Auction 8 (August 31, 2020), lot 243. Tabaristan. Dabuyids. AR hemidrachm (24 mm). Khurshid (740-761 AD), unread year. Obverse: Sassanian-style bust right, name of king in Pahlavi before. Reverse: Zoroastrian fire-altar, mint name TAPWRSTAN to right, date to left. Album 52, Mitchiner WOI 275v. This coin: Purchased from @John Anthony November 2018, ex @arnoldoe collection. 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 Islamic 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. As the portraits are not distinctive (except for one Abbasid governor, Sulayman, who replaced the portrait with the word "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. I initially misidentified the Khurshid coin above as one of Farrukhan before I was corrected by @THCoins . Please post your Tabaristan coins, or whatever else is relevant.
Brilliant coins and rrrrReally mind-expanding writeup, @Parthicus. Thanks on both counts. Sadly, all i have are plain old-fashioned Sasanian. (A couple of solid ones, though, from a published numismatist, Alan DeShazo.)
@Parthicus.........What a lovely set of coins!....Really nice detail....And thanks for the informative write up... I only have one, same as your 3rd... ½ Drachm - "Ispahbadh of Tabaristan" Khurshid - 740-760 AD ..Tabaristan mint PYE 101 - 752/3 AD ) 24.05mm/2 gram. Obverse-Bust right, crescent in right field, breast ornament with 4 pellets. Pellet above crown to right, Name in Pahlavi. Reverse- Fire altar with 2 attendants; star left and crescent right of flames.
As a point of interest, "ispahbad" is the same title as "spalapati" on the bull and horseman coins of the contemporary Turk Shahi rulers at Kabul. The essential difference is the script, Pahlavi vs Sarada (Sanskrit) and Bactrian. The Sarada legend above the bull reads sri spalapati deva. The Bactrian legend on the obverse before the horseman is read by at least one authority as sri ispahbadh.
...Just that, @dltsrq, for your linguistic proficiency (never mind the best, and presumably earliest 'bull and horseman' coin I, for one, have ever seen), it's like, if I had a hat, you'd have it.
Congrats on finishing the Dabuyid set! I have 0 of them. I have a later Tabari dirham: TABARISTAN. Hani (172-176 AH, 788-790 AD). 2.01g ex Heritage, Weekly World and Ancient Coin Auction #231432, August 2014, lot 61249
@Parthicus, thank you for sharing! Your write-up provided a lot of background information that I had yet to discover about my newest addition.
