Pre-reform issues, Arab-Sasanian. Marwan b. al-Muhallab. fl. AH 74 / AD 694. AR Drachm (24.5mm, 2.00 g, 3h). KWAT (Kavad-Khurra) mint. Dated AH 74. VF.

CNG Islamic Auction 2
Lot: 8. Estimated: $ 7 500

Arab-Sasanian and other Pre-reform issues, Silver

Sold For $ 7 000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Go to Live

Pre-reform issues, Arab-Sasanian. Marwan b. al-Muhallab. fl. AH 74 / AD 694. AR Drachm (24.5mm, 2.00 g, 3h). KWAT (Kavad-Khurra) mint. Dated AH 74. Reverse: date in Pahlawi numerals. Malek, Arab-Sasanian 816A. Lightly clipped. VF. Extremely rare.

Marwan b. al-Muhallab’s father was al-Muhallab b. Abi Sufra, who had originally supported the Zubayrids against the Umayyads but who transferred his allegiance to ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan after the defeat of Mus‘ab b. al-Zubayr in AH 72. Little is known of his career, although he was killed during a rebellion in AH 102. This extremely rare issue is his only appearance in the numismatic record.

While the specimen published by Malek is described as ‘clipped’, it seems that these drachms were originally struck to a smaller module and lighter weight standard than normal. The present coin while almost exactly half the weight of a standard drachm, nevertheless still retains its full marginal legend and has all eight intact star-and-crescents in the outer margins on both sides. Even the crown on the Sasanian royal bust is fully visible. It is hard to reconcile this with the assumption that this coin has lost more than half its original silver through clipping. Might it have been struck to the weight standard later adopted for the post-Reform dirham?

The final winners of all CNG Islamic Auction 2 lots will be determined during the live sale that will be held on 27 October 2022.

Winning bids are subject to a 22.5% buyer's fee for bids placed on this website and 25% for all others.

We recognize that our users may have various Internet Browsers and Operating Systems. We like our visitors to have the best possible experience when using our bidding platform. However, we do recognize that it is impossible to develop applications that work identically, efficiently and effectively on all web browsers The CNG bidding platform supports the latest stable major version and stable previous version of Chrome and Firefox.