Medal Iran Silver Religious (Pahlavi) 1973

Sara sent us a picture of her coin which is, in fact, a medal not used for commerce. The medal comes from Iran about five years before the time of the Islamic Revolution, during the reign of the last Persian monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Close inspection reveals the Muslim date AH1352, or 1973 by the Western (Gregorian) calendar. Later, in 1978, strikes and demonstrations paralyzed Iran and the Shah left the country for exile in 1979.

We have only one price point to establish value for this intriguing piece. It comes from Pasargad Coins in Toronto, Canada. In 2013 Pasargad sold this item for about $150 US dollars and that is our best estimate of value. CoinQuest thanks Pasargad for use of their coin image. It is a nice one.

The calligraphic inscriptions deserve attention. The tughra (or toughra) is the large, stand-alone sweeping figure on the front of the coin. Tughras are signatures of sultans or rulers. This tughra contains a portion of a Kalimah 'There is no god but Allah.'

A ḥadīth is a saying (or related item) connected to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and used for interpretation of the Islamic holy book, the Quran. There are three large denominations of Islam: Sunni, Shi'a, and Ibadi, and they rely on different ḥadīth collections. Accoring to LazyVisionary on reddit.com, the inscriptions on Sara's coin are Shi'a ḥadīth, roughly as follows:

'The prophet (peace be upon him) said: O Ali, you're the best of people; nobody doubts you but the infidel.'

'The prophet (peace be upon him) said: If everyone loved Ali, God wouldn't have created hell. The prophet has spoken the truth.'

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