Fals - Ahmad b. Muhammad

The Saffarid dynasty by the mid-tenth century was a shadow of the force that had terrorized Khorasan under Ya'qub b. al-Layth a century earlier. Ahmad b. Muhammad ruled as a largely nominal vassal, first under Samanid pressure and later in uneasy accommodation with it. Copper fals of this period circulated at the lowest tier of a fragmented monetary economy in Sistan, filling transactional gaps that silver dirhams — increasingly hoarded or exported — would not.

Album 1408 encompasses a wide forty-year bracket, and attribution within it often depends on mint and date legibility rather than type alone.