About the archive
Persian Treasury is an educational catalogue of Persian and Iranian numismatics — the coins and paper money of the lands long called Iran-zamin, from the pre-monetary silver of the Median plateau to the polymer banknotes of the contemporary Islamic Republic. Our intent is to make the long, layered story of Iranian money intelligible to readers who arrive without any prior numismatic training, while still being precise enough that students, collectors and museum researchers can use the site as a working reference.
The archive is organised by dynasty across eleven eras: Pre-Achaemenid Iran, the Achaemenid Empire, Seleucid Persia, the Parthian (Arsacid) realm, the Sasanian Empire, the early Islamic centuries and their Iranian dynasties (Tahirid, Saffarid, Samanid, Buyid, Ghaznavid, Seljuq), the Mongol Ilkhanate and Timurid era, the Safavids, the Afsharid and Zand interlude, the Qajars, the Pahlavis, and the Islamic Republic. Each entry records the ruler, denomination, weight, mint, iconography of obverse and reverse, language and script of the legends, and a primary reference — favouring published scholarship (SNS, Sellwood, Album, Göbl, Carradice) and institutional databases (American Numismatic Society, British Museum, Encyclopædia Iranica) over commercial price-guides.
Editorial principles
Persian Treasury is independent and non-commercial. We do not buy or sell coins, do not appraise specimens, and do not accept paid placements in the catalogue. Where a private collector or dealer's image has been used, this is acknowledged in the source link and the licence noted. Wikimedia Commons images are used under their stated CC-BY or public-domain terms. The site is funded by its editors and runs without advertising.
We try to write in plain, modern English. Where a technical term is unavoidable — siglos, frataraka, mihrab, kalima, Pahlavi, mihrab — it is glossed on first use and collected in the numismatic glossary. Persian readers can find a parallel Persian-language version of every page through the language switch in the header; the Persian and English texts are kept in step rather than machine-translated.
How an entry is built
A typical catalogue entry rests on three sources: the institutional record (museum accession or auction-house attribution), the scholarly literature for the type, and the historical context of the issuing authority. Where the three disagree we record the more cautious reading and flag the disagreement. Dates given as "c." are conservative; uncertain attributions are marked with a question mark rather than silently smoothed over. Weights are cited from published specimens, not theoretical standards — Sasanian drachms claim a 4.0 g target but actually circulate between 3.9 and 4.2 g, and we say so.
Iconography is described in the order an examiner would scan a coin: central design, then encircling legend, then border, then exergue. The obverse is the side bearing the principal authority (a portrait, a name, or a religious profession); the reverse is the side bearing the secondary type (a fire altar, an archer, a Qur'anic citation). For machine-struck issues we also note the engraver where known — most Qajar machine dies are signed in tiny Arabic letters near the rim.
Why Persian coins matter
Persian coinage is one of the longest continuous monetary traditions in human history. The gold daric of Darius I, struck around 515 BCE, is among the earliest coins issued as a deliberate instrument of imperial policy rather than a local civic emblem. The Sasanian drachm, struck without significant change from Ardashir I in 224 CE to Yazdegerd III in 651 CE, is the most numerous surviving silver coinage of late antiquity. The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik's coinage reform of 696 CE replaced figurative imagery with pure epigraphy and set the visual grammar of Islamic money for more than a thousand years — a grammar still legible on modern Iranian rial notes.
Coins are also, uniquely among historical objects, both miniature artworks and primary documents. A single Sasanian drachm preserves the king's portrait, his exact title, the mint city, the regnal year and (often) the workshop officer's mark; a Safavid abbasi preserves the Shi'a profession of faith and the calligrapher's school. Coins travelled — Samanid dirhams have been excavated in Viking Sweden — so they are also evidence of trade networks that written sources do not record. The aim of this archive is to make that evidence accessible without diluting it.
Scope and what is not here
Persian Treasury covers coinage and paper money struck or issued by authorities ruling parts of historical Iran. We include neighbouring numismatic traditions — Greco-Bactrian, Kushan, Elymais, Characene — where they bear directly on Iranian history, but they are not exhaustively catalogued. Tokens, jetons, medallions, military medals and orders, banking scrip, hawala receipts, modern bullion rounds and commemorative non-circulating issues are mentioned only where they illuminate a circulating issue. Forgeries are described when they are historically important (Safavid forgeries of Mughal rupees, for example) but are not catalogued as types.
For authenticated examples and very high-resolution plates, follow the source link on each catalogue entry to the issuing museum or to the auction record. Where the only available image is a stylised photograph or a reconstruction, this is stated. We do not knowingly publish unattributed images and we welcome corrections; please use the contact page for image-rights inquiries or factual disputes.
Using the site
New readers usually find it easiest to begin with the timeline for a chronological overview, then jump into a specific era from the full catalogue. The mints page is a geographic index — useful if you have a coin and only the mint city is legible. The rulers index works the other way: if you can read the king's name but not the date or denomination, start there. Banknote collectors will want the dedicated banknotes page, which arranges Iranian paper money from the 1890 Imperial Bank of Persia notes through the latest Islamic Republic issues.
Every page is bilingual (English and Persian) and every coin entry can be deep-linked. Pages are designed to print legibly: an A4 print of an entry should be usable as a handout in a classroom or as a reference at the cabinet.
A note on transliteration: rulers' names follow Encyclopædia Iranica's conventions where possible (Khosrow, not Chosroes; Shapur, not Sapor; Naser al-Din, not Nasruddin). Dates use CE/BCE; Islamic-era coins also carry AH (Anno Hegirae) where the original strike date is on the coin. Pahlavi-era coinage carries SH (Solar Hijri) regnal years, and late Sasanian issues use YE (Yazdgerd Era). Weights are in grams; diameters in millimetres; gold fineness as a percentage where attested by modern analysis.