us on the reverse, weighing 16.8 g. With the accession of Seleucus I Nicator (312-280 B. E.), however, the satraps in his territory, which included Babylonia and the former eastern provinces, lost the right to mint coins. The market ratio between silver and copper was similar (Göbl, 1971, p. The main Arsacid mints were at Ecbatana and Seleucia on the Tigris, though others functioned sporadically. Between 42/662 and 52/672 the names of the Sasanian emperors were replaced by names of local, provincial, or regional governors or occasionally the caliph himself, always written in Pahlavi script.
Although little is known about the organization and staffing of mints in the Achaemenid period, it seems clear that the emperors reserved to themselves the right to coin gold in their empire and that satraps and tributary rulers were allowed to coin silver in their own names for local circulation (Dandamayev and Lukonin, pp. Furthermore, the practice of hoarding in the treasury drained gold and silver from the market and increased demand. The Achaemenid daric and siglos and Athenian “owl” coins also continued to circulate freely, as did satrapal issues. In 305 he began to issue a fairly uniform coinage, with a diademed head of the bearded Zeus on the obverse and a quadriga of elephants on the reverse, which circulated throughout his territory (Mitchiner, 1975, I, pp. A few small, independent rulers in northeastern Persia, Fārs, and Susa also continued to mint their own coins (Hill, pp. The legends on the coins were usually in Greek, and for a considerable time the Arsacids continued the Seleucid dating system (Sellwood, 1980, pp. Mint names are not included on the coins, though many carry monograms and counterstamps, which may have been related to internal mint administration or specific officials. In this period the coinage of Persia seems to have been largely left to local authorities; irregular issues with false dates and mint names abound, and the work of identification and sequencing is still in progress. About twenty mints have been identified securely, nearly all having operated previously under the Sasanians but also including Baṣra and Kūfa (under the pre-Islamic name Āqūlāʾ), the new administrative capitals of the Islamic east.
4.5 g) and then the new Islamic dinar (4.25 g), issued in Damascus, North Africa, and Spain but not in Persia. The new dirhams were first issued at twenty-five or thirty mints, including most of those where Arab-Sasanian silver coins had previously been struck, as well as many new ones.
With establishment of a new eastern capital, Wāseṭ, in 83-84/702-03, all minting for Persia was concentrated there.
In 72/692 minting began at the caliphal capital, Damascus.
The coins evolved rapidly from imitations of Byzantine (gold and copper) and Sasanian (silver) issues, to coins with experimental Muslim images, to purely epigraphic dinars, dirhams, and , the Byzantine copper coin) with Muslim religious inscriptions in Arabic, introduced by the caliph ʿAbd-al-Malek (75-86/685-705) in 77/697 (Bates, 1986).
The effects of this evolution were felt in Persia, where several experimental types with images appeared at different mints; ʿAbd-al-Malek’s governor in Iraq, Ḥajjāj, was the first to have his name inscribed on the coins in Arabic instead of Persian.