Dirham - Anonymous Mah

The anonymous Umayyad dirham emerged directly from Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan's monetary reform of 696–698 CE, a deliberate rupture with the Sasanian-derived coinage that had circulated across the former Persian territories. The reform was explicitly ideological: figurative imagery was stripped away entirely, replaced with Quranic inscription, creating the first purely epigraphic Islamic silver coinage. Byzantine and Sasanian prototypes had dominated regional exchange for generations — their sudden demonetization was as much a political statement as an economic one.

Weight standardization across the caliphate's mints was enforced with unusual rigor for the period, though minor regional deviations in fineness are well documented.