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Drachm - 'Gorigo Shah' Arab-Hephthalite
| Issuer | Umayyad Caliphate |
|---|---|
| Year | 687-689 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 3.71 g |
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| Obverse description | Bust of the ruler facing right in Sasanian style, wearing an elaborate winged crown with crescent and globe finial, the hair rendered in large stylized curls falling to the shoulders. The face is depicted in profile with typical late Sasanian artistic conventions. Pahlavi legends appear in the inner and outer fields surrounding the bust, with Arabic inscription naming the issuer as Gorigo Shah appearing in the field. The overall style closely follows Sasanian drachm prototypes, reflecting the transitional Arab-Hephthalite numismatic tradition. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse script | Pahlavi |
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| Additional information |
The Arab-Hephthalite series occupies one of the more complicated corners of early Islamic numismatics — coins struck by Umayyad governors and local rulers in the eastern territories who found it politically expedient to imitate Sasanian prototypes rather than impose distinctly Islamic types on newly conquered populations. The 'Gorigo Shah' issues reflect exactly that accommodation: a hybrid monetary pragmatism in the decades immediately following the Arab conquest of Transoxiana and the Kabul region, where pre-Islamic iconographic authority still carried weight with local populations.
Album 104 places this squarely within the early Umayyad administrative coinage of the east, circa the reign of Abd al-Malik — the same caliph who would soon impose reformed purely Islamic coinage across the empire after 696.