Obol - Darayan II

The Persid dynasts of Fars — direct cultural inheritors of the Achaemenid tradition — operated as a semi-autonomous priestly kingdom under Parthian suzerainty, striking their own coinage while nominally subordinate to Arsacid overlords. Darayan II ruled during the mid-to-late first century BC, a period when Parthian authority over the region was real but loosely enforced, allowing local dynasts considerable latitude in projecting royal identity through coinage.

The obol denomination in this series is the smallest struck by the Persid kings and survives in genuinely small numbers — Haebler and subsequent cataloguers note that fractional silver from this dynasty is substantially rarer than the drachm issues.