A silver one dirham coin dating to the reign of the Persian king Khosrau II (590-628 CE) and bearing his profile. Khosrau II was the last great pre-Islamic king of the Sassanid Empire, which fell to the Islamic Arabs soon after his death in 628. He had led many victories against Persias greatest rival, the Byzantine Empire, and in the year 614 even managed to capture Judea and its capital Jerusalem from them. Khosraus reign left many of his coins in the area, and also a confusing record in local history. Those short 14 years of his local tenure (614-628) became known as the Second Persian Period, after which Judea was recaptured by the Byzantines, who lost control of it again to the Arabs just ten years later in 638. Somebody gifted me this coin about twenty years ago in this condition with the hole, and my apologies to all serious collectors who dont like to see these relics treated in such manner. Now its hanging on a curtain in the living room, completely lost among thousands of other things beside it. To its left is a copy of a later Persian coin, which was used as a popular local earring motif. Heres a good pic of the Khosrau dirham from Wiki commons: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Khosrau_II_Coin.jpg. On it one can plainly see the four side-decorations on each face, consisting of a six-pointed star inside a crescent - what later became the symbol of Islam.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 11:18:45 +0000
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