Tabaristan

pmac

Recently in the Heritage weekly World & Ancient Auctions, a number of coins from Tabaristan have come up for auction. Most are in excellant condition and seem to have a shape like that of the HOF coins recently produced by the US Mint. Can anyone expound on these? Tabaristan was a region just south of the Caspian Sea. Most of these coins are from the late 8th century.

mdwoods

They must be very thin. The one I looked at only weighed 1.97 grams and it was about the size of a quarter or susie dollar.

Tabaristan

harasha

I briefly looked into coins from Tabaristan many years ago. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending how you look at it, the coin cracked apart during shipment.
As noted above, they are very thin.

Sapyx

<< <i>...seem to have a shape like that of the HOF coins recently produced by the US Mint. >>


The technical term for this is "scyphate" - that is, cup-shaped or bowl-shaped. Tabaristan coins are a late variant of Sassanian coins or more precisely Arab-Sassanian, since many of them were issued after the Islamic conquest but before the distinctive "Islamic" coin style was invented. They depict the Sassanian king (who had, by the time the coins were issued, probably already been overthrown) one one side and on the other is a Zoroastrian fire-altar. The coins are dated, though the date is written out in full in the very ambiguous Sassanian script.

Most Sassanian coins are not scyphate; some later ones do have a slight bend to them.