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A Sasanian-style coin of Yazīd b. Mu‘āwiya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The silver coin presented here (Plate I) was acquired from a travelling dealer. It was sold to the writer in isolation, without accompanying coins or information which might have given some clue to its provenance. The dealer, although ignorant of the Pahlavi script, was clever enough to realise the value of the piece. He offered it as a coin of Khusraw II, but demanded three times the usual price on the grounds that it was of a mint rarely encountered

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1982

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References

1 Author's collection.

2 It should be noted that the orthography of (ŠNT) on the coin corresponds to that given on page 237 of Ervad Sheriarji Dadabhai Bharucha's Pahlavi-Pazend-English Glossary, whereas in Mackenzie, D. N.A concise Pahlavi dictionary it is shown with a terminal′: Google Scholar

3 Mackenzie, , op. cit.: ēk (p. 233), sāl (p. 150), ī (p. 206). For the name Yazīd, see the coin of Yazīd b. al-Muhallab, n. 5 below.Google Scholar

4 It is appropriate here to place on record a comparable specimen: amongst a group of Arab-Sasanian drachms lately acquired by the British Museum is a coin of Khusraw II type without any marginal formula on the obverse; on the reverse the positions of mint and date are reversed, the legend 'pr (for Abarshahr, i.e. Nishāpūr) appearing to left and šst (i.e. 60) to right. Assuming the date to be (as it probably is) 60 of the Hijra, the coin was struck in the same year as the piece described in this article, namely in the first year of Yazīd I b. Mu‘āwiya.

5 Miles, George C., “Some new light on the history of Kirman in the first century of the Hijra”, The world of Islam: studies in honour of Philip K. Hitti, London and New York, 1959, 91;Google Scholar cf. Mochiri, M. I., Études de numismatique iranienne sous les Sasanides at Arabe-Sasanides, II, Tehran, 1977, 433 (at present in limited circulation only).Google Scholar

6 Walker, John, “Some new Arab-Sassanian coins”, Numismatic Chronicle, 1952, 108.Google Scholar