Samarqand in this period sat under loose Sasanian suzerainty while remaining governed by local Sogdian dynasts whose names are largely unrecorded in written sources. The attribution to Smirnova #26 places this within Olga Smirnova's foundational 1981 corpus of Sogdian coins, still the primary reference for this material despite decades of subsequent excavation — particularly from the Afrasiab site, which has yielded the bulk of comparative specimens. The issuing authority almost certainly held a title approximating "king" in Sogdian, but the ruler cannot be matched to any historically attested individual.
Samarqand in this period sat under loose Sasanian suzerainty while remaining governed by local Sogdian dynasts whose names are largely unrecorded in written sources. The attribution to Smirnova #26 places this within Olga Smirnova's foundational 1981 corpus of Sogdian coins, still the primary reference for this material despite decades of subsequent excavation — particularly from the Afrasiab site, which has yielded the bulk of comparative specimens. The issuing authority almost certainly held a title approximating "king" in Sogdian, but the ruler cannot be matched to any historically attested individual.