Pashiz - Wahram V

Wahram V — Bahram-e Gur in Persian tradition — is among the most romanticized rulers in Iranian cultural memory, celebrated in Firdausi's Shahnameh as a hunter-king of almost mythological prowess. His reign coincided with renewed hostilities against the Eastern Roman Empire and significant pressure on the empire's eastern frontier from the Kidarites. The copper pashiz occupied the lowest denomination of the Sasanian monetary hierarchy, issued in quantities that rarely survived circulation in collectible condition given the metal's vulnerability to the alkaline soils of Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau.