Umayyad Caliphate, Silver coinage. AR Dirham (25.6mm, 2.57 g, 10h). Bazija Khusra mint. Dated AH 79 (AD 698/9). VF, lightly toned.

Islamic Auction 5 - Session 1
Lot: 21. Estimated: $ 20 000

Umayyad Silver and Bronze, Silver

Sold For $ 14 000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

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Umayyad Caliphate, Silver coinage. AR Dirham (25.6mm, 2.57 g, 10h). Bazija Khusra mint. Dated AH 79 (AD 698/9). Klat 155; al-‘Ajlan p. 94, no. 36 (mint incorrectly read as ‘Zija Khusra’). VF, lightly toned. Excessively rare.

One of the rarest Umayyad mints, the correct reading of this mint-name has been the source of some confusion. In his 1990 Study of the Earliest Coinage of the Islam Empire, Shams-Eshragh published it as ‘Zijakhusraw’, without the initial ‘b’ and with an erroneous final ‘w’. Al-‘Ajlan, following Diler (Islamic Mints), gives the reading as ‘Zijakhusra’, following Shams-Eshragh’s reading but with the second element correctly read as ‘Khusra’, with a final alif, rather than ‘Khusraw’ with a waw. Both appear to have mistaken the initial ‘b’ of the mint-name for the preposition bi-. In fact, as the present coin clearly shows, the mint legend is to be read as hadha al-dirham bi-Bazījā Khusrā fi sanat..., confirming that the Klat was correct to give the mint-name as Bazija Khusra.

According to Le Strange, Bazija Khusra was the name of an administrative district in Iraq. It lay to the east of the Tigris, roughly thirty miles to the north of the future site of Baghdad. Its sole appearance in the coinage record is as a short-lived Umayyad silver mint, known to have been active only in AH 79 and 82. Many of the first post-Reform dirham mints were established where Arab-Sasanian drachms had previously been issued, but no Arab-Sasanian mint signature has been identified with Bazija Khusra and we are left to conclude that this mint must have been new foundation, opened in AH 79 when this coin was struck.



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