Dirham - al-Mu'tasim

Al-Mu'tasim's reign marked the point at which Turkish slave soldiers — the ghulam — became the effective military backbone of the Abbasid state, a shift that would ultimately reduce his successors to figureheads within a generation. The dirhams struck under his authority circulated through an empire already fracturing at its administrative edges, funded in part by the silver revenues of Khurasan and the eastern provinces.

Album 226 encompasses issues from multiple mints across Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia. Mint attribution is the primary variable separating common from genuinely scarce examples within this type.