Pre-reform issues, Arab-Sasanian. al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf. AH 75-95 / AD 694-713. AR Drachm (29.8mm, 3.63 g, 3h). DA-P (Fasa) mint. Dated YE 71 (AH 83 = AD 702/3). Obverse margin: – /
bism Allah / MN / –. Malek,
Arab-Sasanian 511; Album 36. Dark tone, some tooling in obverse margin. Good VF. Very rare.
The significance of the Pahlawi letters MN in the obverse margin not certain, but several authorities have suggested that it may be an abbreviation for the Arabic word Mansur. Writing in 1966, Curiel read the date on this type as AH 79, leading him to identify ‘Mansur’ as the name of a finance official who held office in Fars and Sistan between AH 75-82. Several years later, however, al-’Ush was able to demonstrate that the year should in fact be read as 71, and correctly interpreted this a Yazdigerd Era date (as normally used on Arab-Sasanian drachms from Darabjird). This equates to AH 83, which would appear to be too late to coincide with Curiel’s administrator. Al-‘Ush therefore proposed that ‘Mansur’ was an adjective meaning ‘Victorious,’ noting that the coin was struck in the year when al-Hajjaj recaptured Darabjird from ‘Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad. If so, this would be one of the earliest Islamic coins to bear an inscription commemorating a military victory.
