Journal Article

Note on a peculiar Arab-Sasanian coinage of Ibn al-Ashʿath

Bates, Michael L., Shaddel, Mehdy

2023

Overview

The present note offers a new, and hopefully more nuanced, reading for a cryptic marginal legend on an issue of the Umayyad-era rebel ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ashʿath (d. circa 85 ah/704 ce). Comparing this legend with several marginal legends of like character, and contextualising the formulae within contemporary religious idiom as expressed in late ancient Arabic-Islamic epigraphy, it is argued that all these legends contain proper nouns invariably belonging to the issuing authority, in conjunction with invocations addressed to God, in an attempt to establish a hierarchic relationship between the two. Drawing on literary sources, it is then demonstrated that the legend of the Ibn al-Ashʿath issue does indeed mention the name of an individual, the local governor, Kharasha ibn Masʿūd ibn Wathīma, a new name in the repertoire of governors known through Arab-Sasanian coinage. Based on these results, a case for further reliance on literary, epigraphic, papyrological, and other forms of evidence in the study of numismatics is made. A new chronology, based on numismatic evidence, for Ibn al-Ashʿath's rebellion is also proposed.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Arabic language / Coins / Epigraphy / Folklore / God / Governors / Inscriptions / Islam / Mythology / Names / Proper nouns