905?: Islamic Samanids 1 Dirham [solved]

Hi,

I would like to kindly ask for your assistance in identifying a silver coin in my possession. I believe I may have correctly determined its type, but I am having difficulty establishing the exact year of minting.

905?: Islamic Samanids 1 Dirham. The coin weighs 1.83 grams.

Any guidance or expertise you could offer would be greatly appreciated. If needed, I would be happy to provide additional photographs or details to support the identification process.

Thank you in advance for your time and help.

Hello — Do you have a link to the coin you think it is? I'm not familiar with these but with another example for comparison, I should be able to read the date.

Note that the second picture is upside down.

I believe this might be one of those coins.

I reduced the search to only silver coins. It might be this coin or another similar, but at least I now know where to look for the mint and date:

I actually thought I could read “90” (تسعون) or “900” (تسع مائة) near the end of this line (which is at 2:00 o'clock on the coin, but the style is unfamiliar to me. One of the weaknesses of the Numista Islamic catalogue is that legends are rarely provided, so I can't train myself with this style of writing. 

I'll try later to find a similar coin with similar legends just for comparison.

That would mean the coin was struck in 905, correct?

Yes — 905, but Hijrah, so 1490-1491 in our calendar.

Edit — No, you're right: 905, which is AH 292. And of course the style belongs to the 290s, not the 1490s.

I'm pretty sure yours is not 292 (= 905) but 291 (904). I read the date thus:

واحد وتسعين ومائتين

This literally translates as “one and ninety and two hundred” which is the usual way in Arabic.

In this image: blue = 1; orange = 90; green = 200; red = the word “and”.

Thank you so much for helping me decipher the date on the coin. You're an absolute legend!

These Samanid dirhams are actually very fascinating. This may be one of the types that was intentionally cut in Eastern Europe to match local silver weights. Heres the Zeno section for these:

https://www.zeno.ru/showgallery.php?cat=12091

Very cool piece!