Falus - Anonymous Hamadan

Hamadan — ancient Ecbatana, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world — operated a municipal copper coinage largely outside the disciplined oversight of the Safavid and Qajar central mints. These anonymous falus circulated in local bazaar transactions where silver was too valuable for small exchange and barter too inefficient. Attribution to Hamadan relies primarily on die-style comparison and provenance rather than explicit mint marks, making clean assignments genuinely difficult across a 278-year window.