1/ Here’s a unique coin I love to show my students @UniofOxford. A fascinating window into the early history of #Islam in #Iran. Minted in Sistan, ca. 691-2. One side portrays the #Sasanian king of kings; the other has the Islamic profession of faith (the shahada) but in Pahlavi! 
2/ Pahlavi (otherwise known as #Zoroastrian Middle #Persian) was the language of the #Sassanian kings and the #Zoroastrian clergy. It remained a prestige language in #Iran even after the Islamic conquest
3/ What makes the coin so unique is that it translates the shahada into an essentially #Zoroastrian idiom: “yazd-ēw bē ōy any yazd nēst mahmat paygāmbar ī yazd” (There is one God, without any other, #Muhammad is the #Prophet of God)
5/ The Muslim governor who minted the coin, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn ‘Abdallah, was clearly targeting Persian-speaking elites, as well as the local convert population (which, culturally speaking, was probably still between #Islam and #Zoroastrianism)
6/ The coin was minted shortly before the famous reforms of the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik, who banished all non-Islamic symbols from coins and replaced them with Islamic slogans plus verses from the #Quran. The Pahlavi coin was thus a kind of precursor
7/ The other place where we find Islamic slogans in the languages of the conquered people is in the western part of the #Caliphate. This one was minted in al-Andalus (Islamic #Spain), ca. 713, in the wake of the conquest. It features an amazing #Latin inscription
8/ The #Latin reads: “In nomine domini non deus nisi deus solus cui non [socius]” (In the name of the Lord, there is no god but God, alone, who has no partner/ ~ بسم الله لا اله الا الله وحده لا شريك له)
10/ Here’s another example of a #Sasanian-style coin with an Islamic inscription, this time the famous #Kharijite slogan, “There is no judgement other than God’s” (لا حكم الا لله)
11/ It may be significant that the Pahlavi inscription on the Sistan coin replaced an image of the #Zoroastrian fire altar, which was commonly found on #Sassanian coins and Islamic imitations. Was this a deliberate swapping of two religious symbols?
12/ Finally, it’s worth noting that something similar happened in the former #Byzantine provinces of the #Caliphate, such as #Syria, where the Muslims minted coins which looked a lot like earlier Byzantine models
13/ What’s the takeaway? 1) Coins are extremely important for understanding early Islamic history 2) Muslims were surprisingly open to appropriating symbols from “enemy” empires and religions 3) Islamic modes of expression crystallized slowly during the conquest era
14/ For the Pahlavi coin see this wonderful article by Malek Iradj Mochiri (which I learned about from reading the work of @tourajdaryaee!) jstor.org/stable/25211243
15/ For Latin coins from the early Islamic period, see: islamic-awareness.org/history/islam/…
