Watch List notes:

UMAYYAD, TEMP. 'ABD AL-MALIK B. MARWAN (65-86h) Dirham, Ard 82h Weight: 2.00g References: Klat 30 (two examples listed); ANS 1977.235.25, same dies Reverse stained and some edge losses but the obverse very clear, good very fine/fine and extremely rare. The enigmatic mint of 'Ard' is one of the rarest Umayyad mint-names. When first published it was read as Urdu, meaning 'camp,' but Michael Bates subsequently proposed that 'Ard' was 'nothing more than a die-engraver's error for Ardashir Khurra,' noting some similarities between dirhams of Ard 82h and Ardashir Kurra 80h (Bates, Mystery Mints of the Umayyads, ONS Occasional Paper 22, 1987). Since Bates wrote, however, another dirham from 'Ard' dated 79h has come to light (Klat 29). This provides support for the idea that 'Ard' was deliberately engraved as such, since it is difficult to imagine that such a serious engraving error, which would entail no fewer than six letters being omitted by mistake, could have been committed twice in different years. Another possibility might be that 'Ard' is in fact an Arabic version of the Pahlawi ART, which was the mint-signature used on Arab-Sasanian drachms struck at Ardashir Khurra, in which case 'Ard' should be regarded as an abbreviation rather than an engraving error.

(4000-6000 GBP)