Wonderful Visual Of The Impact Of Islam On Coinage

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Author	Replies: 7 / Views: 1,510
paul27613 Valued Member United States 152 Posts	Posted 08/24/2014 5:29 pm I was just working on putting some coins up in the electronic store and ran across this pair. These silver half dirhams are from Tabaristan. Think modern Iran, southern part of the Caspian sea. The governors of Tabaristan issued coins that were very similar to Sassanian dirhams. The key you should see on this coin pair is "before" and "after." The right coin has an obverse with an admittedly cartoonish rule on there. The left coin has that modified such that the face is now some geometric shapes. Clearly Islam forbidding the use of graven images, was behind the design modification. Neat neat visual! Report this Post to the Staff

echizento Moderator United States 23731 Posts	Posted 08/24/2014 6:34 pm Interesting coins, Anoob is our expert on this type I'd be very interested in hearing from him on these. What is he time period on these and who is the ruler? Report this Post to the Staff
paul27613 Valued Member United States 152 Posts	Posted 08/24/2014 6:56 pm For the right coin I don't know that I can attribute down to a precise ruler. I saw the hoard when it was in Germany. An unbelievable amount of them pretty much covering a case. For the one with a geometric face, the ruler should be: Suleiman 784-788 AD. Report this Post to the Staff
Sap Moderator Australia 16868 Posts	Posted 08/24/2014 9:14 pm As I understand it, both of these coins are "post-Islamic". The one on the right has been modified from the traditional Sassanian design, too, by the addition of Arabic script in the margins. The thing I find most interesting about this coin is, while they obliterated the ruler's portrait, they forgot to modify the design of the reverse, which depicts a Zoroastrian (pagan polytheists!) fire-altar. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis Report this Post to the Staff
Ancientnoob Pillar of the Community United States 5155 Posts	Posted 08/24/2014 9:21 pm The right coin was minted under the Abbasid governor Hani. Dated yr. 137 PYE (post Yazdigard era.) (788/9AD) TPWRSTAN. The two types do over lap briefly but the right coin is the earlier piece. Report this Post to the Staff
chrsmat71 Pillar of the Community United States 4973 Posts	Posted 08/24/2014 11:30 pm here's mine! Edited by chrsmat71 08/24/2014 11:30 pm Report this Post to the Staff
jcmworld Pillar of the Community United States 567 Posts	Posted 08/26/2014 01:12 am Even better, an Abbasid dirhem, Madinat al Salaam (Baghdad). (I'm too tired to read the date, but looks like 180's-ish). The Umayyids are responsible for the purely epigraphic form of Islamic coinage. In the east they continued to use modified older forms of coinage until the 900's AD, the other major type of imitative coinage used farther east than Tabaristan were the Bukhar-hudat coins, which were debased down to almost billon before being fully replaced (eventually) with orthodox coins by the Samanids. There are also copper fire altar type fulus. Report this Post to the Staff
jcmworld Pillar of the Community United States 567 Posts	Posted 08/26/2014 01:19 am p.s. hello everyone! Report this Post to the Staff
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