Watch List notes:

Umayyad, dirham, Barda'a 93h, obv., annulets o o o o o, rev., marginal legend ends al-mushrikun; in field: wa at end of second line, 2.76g (cf Klat 159 [92h]), central flan crack, otherwise very fine and of the highest rarity, apparently unpublished and only the second known Umayyad dirham reported from the mint. The town of Barda'a was founded circa AD460 on the orders of the Sasanian emperor Peroz I (457-484h). Known initially as Perozapat and later by the Armenian name Partav, it is situated on the left bank of the Tartar river in present-day Azerbaijan. The town was captured by the Muslims in the 20s Hijri and its Armenian name evolved into the Arabic version: Barda'a. Barda'a is one of the very rarest of all Umayyad silver mints. The only other specimen, dated 92h, is a broken coin which first published by Shams Eshragh in 1990 and which is still the only example known to Klat in 2002. No other Umayyad dirham of this mint appears to have been offered for public sale since. Umayyad silver struck at mints in Armenia and the North has been studied in detail by Michael Bates ('The Dirham Mint of the Northern Provinces of the Umayyad Caliphate,' Armenian Numismatic Journal, XV (1989), pp.89-110). Bates argues convincingly that although at least ten different Umayyad mint-names referring to locations in this area appear on the coinage, only one mintwas normally active at any one time. He concludes that the mint 'moved from place to place as the governor moved his headquarters, taking the name at any time of the city of province where he was.' (op. cit, p.91). Thus when two different mint-names are found on dirhams of a particular date, this shows that the governor himself had moved from one location to another in the middle of the year. Bates produced a table listing the sequence of dirham mints active in the region during the Umayyad period. The only missing dates are 79h, 111h, 112h and 113h, but he also noted an anomaly for the year 93h which this coin now resolves. At this time, Umayyad dirhams struck in this region have distin ctive, rounded, 'spidery' epigraphy similar to contemporary dirhams from Damascus. The only coin known to Bates dated 93h was a dirham struck at al-Bab with completely different, Eastern-style letter-forms, of which Bates remarked ...it cannot have been issued by the same minters who usually made Northern dirhams, but must have been produced by Easternminters in the company of a military expedition from the East.' This left a gap in the issues of the regional governor, who struck dirhams at both Arminiya and Janza in 92h and 94h, but for whom no dirhams were then known for the year 93h. The discovery of this coin demonstrates that the arrival of an army from the East did not mean that the local governor stopped striking coins in this year, and means that we can place him in the town of Barda'a from late 92h through 93h. Although our written sources are silent on the point, this newly-discovered coin hints at a significant campaign northwards in this year, involving local forces moving north to take a position in Barda'a, as well as extra troops brought in from elsewhere who pushed further north as far as al-Bab (modern Derbend, only 130 miles north of Barda'a). (£30000-40000)