ts 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.