Tabaristan? 1/2 drachm

[mordor]

I would be very thankful if anybody could help me with better attribution of this 1/2drach.
Also opinions of its authentity are welcome.

[Jim Roberts]

That's the anonymous "Afzut" or "Afzwt" type, Album 73, issued 780-793 AD.  Offhand I don't see any reason to doubt its authenticity,  There's a picture of a similar coin here:

http://numismatics.org/search/results?q=department_facet:%22Islamic%22%20AND%20persname_facet:%22afzwt%22

[mordor]

Thank you Jim! Is it possible to read out the exact date on the coin?

[Jim Roberts]

Yes, the date on your coin is engraved very clearly on the left-hand side of the reverse.  But I do not feel confident about reading those dates, with their combination of Aramaic and Persian forms, and high level of abbreviation.  Maybe someone else on this forum has figured out the trick and can jump in with the answer.  (And perhaps even point us to a good reference on how to read these dates?)   Or you could go to ZENO.RU which shows many examples with different dates, and maybe you can decide which one matches your coin.  Sorry I can't do better on this.  Here's the link...

http://www.zeno.ru/showgallery.php?cat=5615

[Howard Cole]

You might want to try the table here.
http://www.grifterrec.com/coins/sasania/sas_mint/dp/sas_date_table.html

[Jim Roberts]

Yours is definitely 13x and could be 135 PYE.  I've attached a picture of the reverse side of a fairly clear Afzut 135 from my collection.  The final digit of the date is at the top of the left-hand side and looks like <c on my coin.  It's somewhat different on yours and different again on the specimen at ZENO.RU:

http://www.zeno.ru/showphoto.php?photo=98699

Some numbers look quite similar to others, yet there's a lot of variability in the way each number can be written.  So it's a subject I haven't yet figured out how to handle reliably.

[Jim Roberts]

In the message I just sent, I described the date in my coin as resembling a 3-symbol sequence:  a "less-than" character followed by a "vertical-bar" character followed by the letter "c".  The vertical-bar character somehow got omitted; at least it doesn't show up in the message displayed on my computer.