Drachm - Kidara in the name of Wahram I Kushanshah)

The Kidarites emerged as a distinct dynastic power in Bactria during the mid-fourth century, likely displacing or absorbing the remnant Kushano-Sasanian administration. This coin issues in the name of Wahram I — a Sasanian royal name deliberately adopted — signals the Kidarite strategy of projecting legitimacy through borrowed imperial nomenclature rather than erasure of the preceding order. Göbl's classification of this type within the Hun sequence remains contested; some scholars position the Kidarites as an early wave of Hunnic migration, others as a separate Central Asian group entirely distinct from the Chionites pressing from the north.