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Drachm - Anonymous Experimental, Arab-Sasanian
| Issuer | Umayyad Caliphate |
|---|---|
| Year | 690 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Technique | Hammered |
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| Obverse description | Sasanian-style bust of the ruler facing right, wearing a winged mural crown, rendered in the traditional late Sasanian artistic style. The bust is enclosed within two concentric circular borders, with three stars within crescents arranged in the margin. In the second quadrant before the portrait, the Arabic Basmala inscription bism Allah appears in Kufic script. Uniquely, the space normally occupied by the governor's name instead carries the Islamic profession of faith muhammad rasul Allah, identifying this as an experimental anonymous issue of significant religious and historical character. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Standard Arab-Sasanian reverse depicting a Zoroastrian fire altar with a flame issuing from the top, flanked by two attendant figures facing inward, enclosed within three concentric circular borders. Four stars within crescents are distributed in the margin. The mint name inscription is blundered and largely illegible, possibly a corrupt derivation of the toponym WYH. The date numeral, rendered in crude Psalter Pahlavi script, appears to be a degenerate form of the Pahlavi word sabah meaning seven, likely intended to denote year 67 AH (circa 686-687 CE), though the dating is uncertain. |
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| Additional information |
The late 680s and early 690s saw the Umayyad administration experimenting with coinage reform ahead of the sweeping monetary overhaul ordered by Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. These transitional issues — retaining Sasanian drachm conventions while introducing Arabic religious inscriptions — were part of a broader effort to assert caliphal authority over a monetary system still running largely on pre-Islamic Iranian prototypes nearly six decades after the conquest. Album 34F sits within that experimental window, before the fully reformed fals and dirham types displaced the hybrid series entirely around 696–698.