Drachm - Khusro III

Khusro III was one of several claimants who seized the title of Shahanshah during the catastrophic civil wars that dismembered the Sasanian state after 628. His reign lasted only a matter of months in 632, a year that also saw the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the imminent launch of the Arab conquests that would extinguish the empire entirely within two decades. Coins issued in his name are rare precisely because his authority was never stable — provincial mints operated selectively, and allegiance shifted rapidly between rival claimants.

The regnal year on surviving specimens is critical to attribution, as several contemporaneous pretenders struck nearly identical issues.