Dirham - Anonymous al-Basra

The anonymous dirhams of al-Basra from this period were struck in the immediate aftermath of the Abbasid revolution of 750, when the new dynasty was still consolidating control over the eastern minting network inherited from the Umayyads. Omitting the caliph's name was not an oversight — it reflects the administrative turbulence of the early Abbasid transition, before the reformed coinage under al-Mansur standardized attribution across provincial mints. Al-Basra itself was one of the oldest Islamic mint cities, its dies tracing back to the Arab-Sasanian issues of the previous century.