Drachm - 'Abd al-Malik b. Abi Shaykh Arab-Sasanian

This coin falls within the transitional Arab-Sasanian series — issues that retained Sasanian imagery and administrative conventions while Arab governors substituted their own names for those of the Zoroastrian fire-keepers they had displaced. 'Abd al-Malik b. Abi Shaykh served as governor in the former Sasanian east, and coins bearing his name are among the less frequently encountered in the broader series. The year 692 places this squarely in the decade before the Umayyad monetary reform of 696–698, when the caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan abolished figural coinage entirely and introduced the purely epigraphic dirham that would define Islamic currency for centuries.