An Achaemenid gold coin of about 8.4 grams and ~95% purity, introduced by Darius I around 515 BCE. Worth twenty silver sigloi, it became the gold standard of the eastern Mediterranean.

A silver coin of the Islamic world standardised at ~2.97 g by the Umayyad reform of 696 CE. The name derives from Greek drachmē via the Sasanian drachm.

What is Pahlavi script?

Pahlavi is the writing system used for Middle Persian, the official language of the Sasanian Empire. It is read right-to-left and appears on coin obverses around the royal portrait.

Traditionally a unit equal to 10 rials in everyday Iranian speech. Since the 2020 redenomination the toman is the official currency, with 1 new toman = 10,000 old rials.

Persian Treasury

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Reference

Numismatic Glossary

The vocabulary of Persian coinage — from the Achaemenid daric to the modern toman, with the Greek, Pahlavi and Arabic terms a collector needs to read a catalogue entry. Organised here by category: denominations, metals, minting, iconography, epigraphy, grading and collecting.

Denominations

Daric: Achaemenid gold coin of ~8.4 g and ~95% purity, introduced by Darius I around 515 BCE. Worth 20 silver sigloi; the gold standard of the eastern Mediterranean for two centuries.
Siglos: Achaemenid silver coin of ~5.4–5.6 g, the everyday companion to the daric. Twenty sigloi equalled one daric; struck almost exclusively at Sardis.
Drachm / Drachma: Silver coin standard inherited from Greek practice. The Sasanian drachm of ~4 g circulated for four centuries (224–651 CE) and survived as the Islamic dirham.
Tetradrachm: Greek silver coin worth four drachms (~17 g). The principal denomination of Seleucid and Parthian Mesopotamia, struck at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris and dated by the Seleucid Era.
Dinar: Gold coin of the Islamic world (~4.25 g), inherited from the Roman denarius aureus and standardised by the Umayyad reform of 696 CE. Iranian dynasties from the Buyids to the Safavids struck their own dinars.
Dirham: Silver coin of the Islamic world (~2.97 g), inherited from the Sasanian drachm and standardised in 696 CE. From Greek drachmē; the workhorse coin of the medieval Iranian economy.
Abbasi: Safavid silver coin of c. 7.7 g introduced by Shah Abbas I (r. 1588–1629), worth four shahis. The main circulating denomination of Safavid Iran for two centuries.
Shahi: Safavid and post-Safavid silver coin of approximately 1.9 g. Four shahis made one abbasi; the small change of everyday Safavid commerce.
Qiran: Qajar silver coin of c. 4.6 g introduced under Fath-Ali Shah and reformed by Nasir al-Din Shah in the 1820s–70s. Ten qirans equalled one toman.
Toman: Persian gold unit equivalent to 10,000 dinars or, from the 19th century, 10 qirans. Redenominated in 2020 to replace the rial (1 new toman = 10,000 old rials) and still used colloquially long before that.
Rial: The modern Iranian currency, introduced by Reza Shah in 1932 to replace the qiran at parity. Subdivided into 100 dinars; the sole legal tender name until the 2020 toman redenomination.
Pahlavi (coin): Modern Iranian gold coin introduced in 1927 and struck until 1979. Issued in denominations of 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2½, 5 and 10 Pahlavi, each pegged loosely to the British sovereign.
Tanga / Tanka: Silver coin of Timurid and post-Timurid Central Asia, ancestor of the Indian rupee and the modern Tajik somoni. Refined under Ulugh Beg's Herat and Samarqand mints.
Larin: Distinctive bent-wire silver coin of the Persian Gulf trade, named after the port of Lar. Widely used from the 16th to 18th centuries across the Indian Ocean rim.
Mahmudi: Safavid-era silver coin used mainly in Gulf and Indian Ocean trade, roughly equivalent in weight to the larin and named for a local ruler's title.

Metals & Alloys

Electrum: A naturally occurring or artificial alloy of gold and silver used for the earliest Lydian coinage (c. 610 BCE), the direct ancestor of Achaemenid gold and silver issues.
Billon: A low-grade alloy of silver with a majority of base metal, used for small change in the late Sasanian and early Islamic periods when silver was in short supply.
Bullion: Precious metal valued by weight rather than face value. Pre-Achaemenid Iran used silver bullion (hacksilber) before struck coinage was adopted from Lydia.
Hacksilber: Cut and weighed silver fragments used as pre-monetary currency in the ancient Near East, including Median-era Iran, before coined money arrived in the 6th century BCE.
Fineness / Purity: The proportion of precious metal in a coin's alloy, expressed as a percentage or in parts per thousand. Achaemenid darics were struck at roughly 95–97% pure gold.
Debasement: The deliberate reduction of precious-metal content in a coinage, often to fund war or cover deficits. Late Sasanian and late Qajar silver both show measurable debasement over time.
Alloy: A mixture of two or more metals; virtually all historical coinage uses an alloy rather than pure metal, since pure gold and silver are too soft to wear well.

Minting

Hammer-struck: Manufacturing method using two engraved dies and a hammer blow to impress an image on a metal flan. Used for all Persian coinage from the Achaemenids through to early 19th-century Qajar issues.
Milled coinage: Machine-struck coinage with a reeded or lettered edge, introduced to Iran under Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar in the 1870s using British-supplied screw presses.
Die: An engraved metal tool, usually of hardened steel or bronze, that stamps a design onto a coin blank. Persian mints used a fixed lower (anvil) die and a movable upper (punch) die.
Flan / Planchet: The blank metal disk cut or cast to size before striking. Hammer-struck Persian flans are often irregular in shape compared to the perfectly round flans of milled coinage.
Die axis: The rotational relationship between obverse and reverse dies, measured in clock-hour position. Sasanian coins typically show 'coin die axis' rather than the fixed 12 o'clock axis of modern issues.
Overstrike: A coin struck on top of an earlier coin rather than a blank flan, often visible as ghost traces of the undertype. Common in Alexander-era Persian mints reusing Achaemenid dies and flans.
Mint mark: An abbreviation indicating where a coin was struck. Sasanian mints used Pahlavi monograms (e.g. WH for Ctesiphon, MY for Merv); Islamic mints wrote the city name openly in Arabic.
Provincial mint: A regional mint operating under royal authority but distinct from the capital, such as Tabriz or Mashhad under the Safavids, often producing distinct local styles or fineness standards.
Royal / Imperial mint: The primary mint tied to the capital and the ruler's direct authority, such as Isfahan under the Safavids or Tehran under the Qajars and Pahlavis.

Iconography

Archer-king: The canonical Achaemenid coin type showing the Great King kneeling or running with bow and spear. Five sub-types (I–V) are recognised in Carradice's standard classification.
Fire altar: The standard reverse of Sasanian coinage: a Zoroastrian fire altar flanked by two attendants. Used continuously from Ardashir I to Yazdegerd III (224–651 CE).
Frataraka: 'Governor' in Old Persian. Local dynasts of Persis (c. 280–140 BCE) who struck silver coins in Achaemenid style — archer and fire altar — under Seleucid suzerainty.
Kidaris / Cidaris: The tall crown worn by the Achaemenid king on coinage, derived from earlier Median and Elamite headgear, and a direct ancestor of later Sasanian royal crowns.
Investiture scene: A Sasanian iconographic motif showing the king receiving the ring of sovereignty from a deity, most often used on the reverse of gold dinars and rock reliefs rather than everyday drachms.
Lion and sun (Shir-o-Khorshid): The national emblem of Iran from the Qajar to Pahlavi periods, showing a lion holding a sword before a rising sun, appearing on coins, banknotes and the flag until 1979.
Tughra: An ornate calligraphic royal monogram used mainly in Ottoman and, occasionally, in Qajar administrative and commemorative contexts rather than standard circulating coinage.
Portrait bust: A profile or three-quarter image of the ruler. Rare in strict Islamic coinage after 696 CE but revived on Qajar and Pahlavi coins and medals influenced by European numismatic fashion.
Tamgha: A clan or dynastic seal-mark of Central Asian steppe origin, adopted on some Ilkhanid and Golden Horde coinage as a mark of tribal authority alongside Islamic legends.

Epigraphy

AH (Hijri): Anno Hegirae — the Islamic lunar calendar dating from the Prophet Muhammad's emigration to Medina in 622 CE. Used on almost all Islamic-era Iranian coinage.
Pahlavi (script): Middle Persian script used on Sasanian coinage to write the king's name and titles around the obverse portrait. Read right to left, it is one of the most compact royal epigraphies in numismatics.
Kufic: An early angular Arabic script used on Umayyad and Abbasid coinage from 696 CE onward, prized by collectors for its austere geometric clarity.
Naskh: A more rounded, cursive Arabic script that gradually replaced Kufic on Islamic coinage from the 12th century, used widely on Seljuq, Ilkhanid and early Safavid issues.
Nastaliq: The elegant sloping Perso-Arabic calligraphic style developed in Iran, used for the ornate religious and royal legends on Safavid, Afsharid, Zand and Qajar coinage.
Legend: The inscribed text on a coin, whether religious formula, ruler's name, mint city or date. Legends are the single richest source of dating and attribution evidence on Islamic coins.
Marginal legend: Text running around the outer rim of a coin's field, commonly used on Islamic dirhams and dinars to record the mint and date in a circular band.
Kalima: The Islamic declaration of faith ('There is no god but God...'), a standard obverse or reverse legend on almost all Islamic gold and silver coinage after 696 CE.
Titulature: The full sequence of a ruler's honorific titles as inscribed on a coin, such as 'al-Sultan al-A'zam' or 'Shahanshah', which can help precisely date and attribute an issue.
Regnal year: The year of a ruler's reign, often given alongside or instead of the Hijri year. Sasanian drachms are dated almost exclusively by regnal year rather than an era system.

Grading

Mint State (MS): The condition of a coin showing no evidence of circulation wear, graded numerically 60–70 on the Sheldon scale used by professional grading services.
About Uncirculated (AU): A grade just below Mint State, showing only the slightest trace of friction on the highest design points, still retaining most original mint lustre.
Extremely Fine (EF/XF): A grade denoting light overall wear with sharp major design details still fully visible; a very desirable condition for hammer-struck Islamic and Persian coins.
Very Fine (VF): A grade showing moderate wear across the design but with all major elements — legends, portrait, mint mark — still clearly legible.
Fine (F): A grade showing considerable wear, with major devices worn flat in places but the overall type and legend still identifiable.
Good (G): A heavily worn grade in which the design is only partially legible; still collectible for rare types or as a study piece, especially for scarce mint-dated Sasanian or Islamic issues.
Strike: The sharpness and completeness of a coin's design transfer from die to flan, independent of wear. A weak strike is common on hammer-struck Persian coinage due to imperfect die alignment.
Toning: The natural colour change on the surface of a silver or copper coin caused by oxidation over centuries, often prized by collectors when even and attractive.
Patina: The surface layer that forms on copper, bronze or base-metal coins over time, ranging from green verdigris to brown or black, generally left undisturbed by careful collectors.
Flan crack: A split in the coin's metal, usually caused by striking a brittle or overly thin flan; common on late Sasanian and early Islamic silver issues.
Weak strike: An area of a coin's design that appears soft or incomplete due to insufficient striking pressure or worn dies, not to be confused with circulation wear.
Die break: A raised, irregular line or blob on a coin caused by a crack or chip in the die itself, appearing identically on every coin struck with that damaged die.

Collecting

Provenance: The documented ownership history of a coin, including prior auction appearances and named collections, which can significantly affect both value and authenticity confidence.
Hoard: A group of coins buried or concealed together, often centuries ago, and later discovered as a single archaeological find. Major Sasanian and early Islamic hoards have reshaped mint attribution studies.
Numismatics: The scholarly study and collecting of coins, medals, paper money and related objects, encompassing history, art history, economics and metallurgy.
Type collection: A collecting strategy focused on acquiring one representative example of each distinct design type, rather than every date or mint variation within a series.
Countermark: A small secondary stamp applied to an already-struck coin, often to revalidate it in a new territory or reign. Found on some Qajar and colonial-era Persian Gulf coinage.
Restrike: A coin struck later than its stated date, using original or recreated dies, sometimes officially and sometimes to satisfy collector demand; care is needed to distinguish these from originals.
Forgery / Fake: A coin made to deceive collectors, either as a fantasy piece or as a copy of a genuine rare type. Persian numismatics has a long history of both ancient contemporary forgeries and modern fakes.
Auction house: A firm specialising in the public sale of coins by competitive bidding; major Islamic and Persian coin sales are conducted by specialist numismatic auction houses worldwide.
Slabbing / Certification: The process of professional grading and encapsulation of a coin in a sealed plastic holder, providing buyers with an independent assessment of authenticity and condition.