Follis "Justin and Sophia" - Sasanian Occupation of Syria

Between 611 and 619, Sasanian forces under Shahrbaraz swept through Roman Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, temporarily dismantling the eastern Roman monetary infrastructure entirely. This follis belongs to the contested output of that occupation period — coins struck on Roman flans, in Roman module, but under Persian administrative authority. The attribution to Justin and Sophia is typological rather than political; the Sasanians were not honoring a Roman emperor but exploiting existing dies and a population already habituated to the coinage.

Heraclius eventually recovered the territories by 628, rendering this occupation currency obsolete within roughly a decade of its first striking.