Fals - Anonymous

The anonymous copper fals presents one of the more persistent puzzles in early Islamic numismatics. Following Abd al-Malik's sweeping monetary reform of 696–698 AD, which standardized the gold dinar and silver dirham on explicitly aniconic, epigraphic designs, the copper coinage was left largely unregulated. Local mints across Syria, Iraq, and the eastern provinces continued striking fulus on their own schedules, with their own weight standards, answerable to no central authority.

The BMC Walker groupings referenced here reflect decades of curatorial effort to sort an essentially chaotic series by fabric, epigraphy, and provenance rather than by any mint attribution the coins themselves provide.