Conference on Medieval Iranian Coins Crosses Boundaries

"The Heritage of Sasanian Iran: Dinars, Drahms and Coppers of the Late Sasanian and Early Muslim Periods" held at the American Numismatic Society on June 8th and 9th attracted scholars and participants from around the world. The conference presented a wide range of papers on Late Sasanian and early Muslim coinages. It also featured a workshop on the reading of the Pahlavi legends on these coins. The conference was held in memory of William B. Warden (1947-2000), a numismatist devoted to these coinages. The Society of Iranian Studies and Sanford J. Durst co-sponsored it with the American Numismatic Society. More than thirty people attended from across the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

The papers interpreted the different coinages struck in Iran and its adjacent regions during the sixth and seventh centuries CE as documents of social, political and economic life. Michael L. Bates, Curator of Islamic Coins at the ANS, gave the plenary lecture entitled "The Coinages of Iran and Its Neighbors in the Seventh Century." The lecture traced the development of the late Sasanian coin type and its imitation in numerous succeeding coinages in Iran and adjacent regions.

The first panel, entitled "The Representation of Dynasty and Government in the Late Sasanian Period," emphasized the constancy of dynastic ideology and administrative policies under the late Sasanians despite dynastic conflicts and wars with the Byzantines and the Muslims. In "The Roman Near East under Sassanian Rule (603-630): History and Coinage," Clive Foss (The University of Massachusetts at Boston) argued that Khusro II generally maintained local administrative structures in Syria after its conquest by him. The Persian occupation was less destructive than generally believed. In this context, the Sasanian government employed Byzantine coinage in Syria, some of it locally struck. In "Queen Buran and the Restoration of Sasanian Imperial Propaganda," Touraj Daryaee (The University of California at Riverside) argued for a new reading of the legends on a unique dinar of Queen Buran. The new reading reveals Queen Buran as the restorer of the imperial ideology of her father, Khusro II claiming once again descent from the Gods. In "Patterns of Administrative Authority among the Mints of Yazdigard III," Susan Tyler-Smith meticulously documented the continuity of local mint administration in especially western and southern Iran through the turmoil of the Muslim conquests.

The second panel, entitled "The Exchange of Coinage between Eras," discussed the vagaries of monetary policy and practices from the pre-Islamic into the early Muslim periods. In "Islam's 'Silver Mean': Evidence for the Origin and Early Use of the 'Weight of Seven' in the Late Antique and Early Muslim Periods," Stuart D. Sears (The American University in Cairo) documented the use of the standard weight of seven tenths a mithqal for the striking and exchange of coins before the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik's monetary reforms at the end of the seventh century and even before Islam. Attempts in literary sources to give this standard a specifically Islamic identity may reflect the difficulty it faced in superseding other weight standards for Iranian silver in the eighth century. In "Bukharan Silver Coinage at the Time of Arab Conquest," Aleksandr Naymark (Hofstra University) traced the imitation of Sasanian style coinage at Bukhara from the fifth century to the end of the seventh century. In particular, he gave a new reading for the legends of a group of issues attributing them to a king named Khunak. This attribution is important since it provides a nearly certain chronological context for a portion of an otherwise difficult series lacking reliable names and dates. In "The Chronology of Arab-Sasanian Copper Coinage," Stephen Album (Independent Scholar) outlined distinct phases in the production and use of copper coins in late seventh century and early eighth century Iran. The phases were marked by iconographic and epigraphic conventions with the imitation of the Sasanian type, the introduction of pictorial images and Arabic legends and, finally, the use of only Arabic legends.

The third panel, entitled "Questions of Identity on Early Muslim Drahms," treated different problems in the identity of mints, name legends and iconographical features. In "From Identity to Piety: the Words and Images on Early Islamic Coins," Habibeh Rahim (St. John's University) discussed the variety of symbolic representations of political and religious ideology on early Islamic coinage. In "Kharijite Rebel or Umayyad Partisan?: The Issue of 'Abd al-'Aziz b. MDWL?," Stuart D. Sears (The American University in Cairo) presented the very rare issue of an only recently discovered ruler. Despite questions about the exact identity of this person, the issue demonstrates the tenuous character of Umayyad rule in Fars in the early stages of the second fitna (CE 680-92) as different political factions contested the caliphate's authority. In the next presentation, Alan S. De Shazo (Independent Scholar) argued convincingly for the attribution of an obscure mint legend ShW to a site in the district of Darabgird. The legend occurs both singly and in combination with the familiar legend of Darabgird, DA. In "The Mihrab and Anaza Drachm," Luke Treadwell (Oxford University) reinterpreted the iconography of the well-known drahm struck among the caliph 'Abd al-Malik's experimental issues. He suggested that the issue reflected primarily martial rather than religious propaganda in the context of successive coin designs at the mint of Damascus. The so-called mihrab probably represents a protective covering emptied of its cross as it was generally known from many other media. It covered instead a spear or arrow.

Participants have been invited to submit their papers for publication to the Journal of Ancient Iranian Studies, The American Journal of Numismatics and Al-Sikka. The conference will meet again next year on June 7th and 8th. Abstracts for proposed talks and inquiries should be sent to Stuart D. Sears (sears@aucegypt.edu) or Michael L. Bates (bates@amnumsoc.org).

(Stuart D. Sears, The American University in Cairo)