BUWAYHID, ‘IZZ AL-DAWLA (356-367h) Gold medallion of five dinars weight, Madinat al-Salam 363h Obverse: La ilaha illa Allah wahdahu la sharik lahu duriba bi-Madinat al-Salam sanat thalath wa sittin wa thalath mi’at. Lion with long mane to left, biting the neck of a deer which lies beneath it. Reverse: La ilaha illa Allah Muhammad rasul Allah salla Allah ‘alayhi wa salam al-Muti‘ lillah al-amir ‘Izz al-dawla. Leopard to right, with spots represented by trefoils, attacking an ibex which lies beneath it. Weight: 20.54g References: Ilisch 40 = Miles, ‘A Portrait of the Buyid Prince Rukn al-Dawlah,’ ANS MN XI (1964), p. 288, note 14 (this piece?) A fine cast with the fields carefully burnished, good extremely fine and of the highest rarity. Provenance: Purchased from Oliver Hoare Ltd during the 1980s (and see also below). The photographs in the articles by both Ilisch and Miles are of plaster casts, apparently presented to the ANS by Dr John Walker of the British Museum in 1955. Walker did not have any provenance information for the piece, but Miles himself had already obtained pencil rubbings of a similar medallion which he suspected was the same as that seen by Walker. These rubbings had come from Edward Gans, who told Miles that he had obtained the medallion from the estate of a Zurich coin dealer Dr Hans Nussbaum, January 1939. With the rubbings given to Miles was a note, confirming the diameter and weight of the medallion as ’38 mm, 20.5 grms’ – exactly the same as the present piece. When writing in 1964, Miles was unaware of the piece’s whereabouts, but Gans stated that he had sold it in 1943 to Joseph Brummer, the celebrated art dealer and collector. Parts of Brummer’s superb collection were sold at various times: a portion went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1947 (the year of Brummer’s death), while 2,400 further lots from the Brummer Estate were sold by Parke Bernet Galleries in 1949, and a a final group of 600 choice items was sold in Zurich in 1979 by Koller, in conjunction with Spink & Son of London. No such object can be traced among these major dispersals, although it is of course possible that other pieces from Brummer’s collection and inventory were sold privately over the years. Thus while it seems likely, is not possible to say for certain that the piece offered here is the original from which Walker’s casts were taken, and there are several minor flaws visible in the photographs of the casts which are not obvious on this medallion. Whether these flaws were indeed part of the object shown to Walker, or have been created or exaggerated in the casting process, is impossible to say – and it is frustrating that Walker himself appears to have kept no records of the piece’s technical data or provenance. The tradition of producing special coins and medallions for presentation purposes has its origins in the Grec0-Roman world, and by the later Roman and Byzantine periods had become a well-established aspect of the coinage. Harun al-Rashid (170-193h) seems to have been the first Islamic ruler to issue special coins for presentation, and during the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil (232-247h) donative gold and silver coins began to be issued regularly. Early Islamic presentation coins were identical to regular currency issues in both legends and weight, but special care was taken over the calligraphy and the design itself was slightly modified so as to leave a wide, plain border around the legends themselves. Apart from making them stand out from regular coins, this also made it possible for them to be pierced or loop-mounted for wear without damage to the legends. The variety of designs seen on Islamic donative coins expanded during the 3rd/9th and early 4/10th centuries. Al-Mutawakkil produced a remarkable silver coin of one mithqal weight with a facing portrait on the obverse and a camel on the reverse, while al-Mu‘tazz (251-255h) issued gold and silver donative coins depicting animals and birds (see lot 25). The range of weights expanded also, from tiny gold and silver fractions weighing less than 1g to large, imposing double-dinars and five-dirham pieces. But most of the donative coins produced between the 230s and 330s were still versions of contemporary currency types, usually with a broad margin and, in the case of the fractions, sometimes with shorter legends to fit the smaller module of the coin. All surviving donatives produced during this period appear to have been struck, presumably at the same mint and using the same facilities which produced regular currency coins.The Buwayhids were from Daylam, a mountainous region in Northern Iran on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The founders of the dynasty, Rukn al-dawla (whose full name was Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan) and his brother ‘Imad al-dawla (Abu’l-Hasan ‘Ali), both entered the services of the Samanid general Makan b. Kaki, but later switched their allegiance to another local warlord, Mardawij b. Ziyar. After Mardawij was murdered in 323h, much of the territory formerly under his control fell to the Buwayhid brothers. They went on to consolidate and expand their position until Baghdad itself came under Buwayhid control in 334h. The caliph al-Mustakfi was deposed, and al-Muti‘ installed in his place with the Buwayhids established as the new caliph’s ‘protectors.’ While the caliphs retained their religious authority, their secular power was now gone. Henceforth, Baghdad would remain under Buwayhid control for more than a century.Much has been made of the Buwayhids’ role in what has been termed the ‘Iranian interlude’: the period between the weakening of Arab ascendancy in Iran from the later 3rd/9th century and the coming of the Seljuqs in the mid 5th/11th. During these two centuries, several dynasties with Iranian origins began to revive aspects of pre-Islamic Iranian culture, and this also found expression in the Buwayhid coinage. Thus we find Persian names and titles, including the pre-Islamic shahanshah, ‘King of Kings,’ used increasingly frequently on dinars and dirhams struck in the Buwayhid lands. This Iranian revival was also expressed in the donative coins they produced, which can be divided into two distinct classes. On the one hand, the Buwayhids continued to strike donative gold and silver coins, which follow the the familiar pattern established under the Abbasids. Some of these were of exceptional size, including the magnificent 10-dinar coin issued at al-Muhammadiya in 362h (from our auction 73, 23 April 2015, lot 166), but like their Abbasid precursors they are almost all purely epigraphic, generally bear standard coinage legends, and are struck to weights which fit the currency denominations of the day. Even the huge gold coin of al-Muhammadiya 362h mentioned above was carefully made to weigh exactly ten dinars. On the other hand, the Buwayhids also began to produce medallions, which differed from these donative coins in many crucial respects. These medallions were cast, which made it possible for them to feature large pictorial designs rendered in high relief. The Buwayhids could strike large donative coins successfully as long as these were purely epigraphic; the legends were deeply and cleanly engraved on the die, much of whose surface was in fact plain, and the technology of the day was therefore able to give a clear impression on the flan. But striking a large, complex pictorial design requires far greater force applied consistently across the blank, and good results would have been difficult if not impossible to obtain. It is notable that the images on Abbasid pictorial donatives of the third century tend to bear relatively simple, stylized images. Sacrificing detail in this way probably made it easier to produce a coin with a clear, well-struck image, while also perhaps playing to the strengths of die-cutters accustomed to engraving linear coin legends. By casting these medallions rather than striking them, the Buwayhids completely avoided this problem – which bedevilled all large coins produced before the advent of machinery – making it possible to produce large, spectacular pictorial medallions such as the present piece.These new cast medallions were also markedly different from struck donative coins in their design, legends and above all their imagery. The examples discussed by Miles and Ilisch all bear images which hark back to distinctively Iranian themes. Miles illustrates two pieces which bear facing portraits of Buwayhid rulers, all clearly Sasanian in their style and inspiration, and all accompanied by inscriptions in Pahlawi rather than Arabic. Both were made at Iranian mints. The present medallion is one of two such pieces produced ‘Izz al-dawla at Baghdad itself; these bear legends in Arabic only, but again the imagery is from the Iranian canon. The motif of a lion or leopard attacking a stag or gazelle, as seen here, goes back to coins from the ancient Greek world, and is also encountered on Parthian and Sasanian silver. On a later medallion dated 365h, ‘Izz al-dawla himself is shown in an attitude described by Miles as ‘seated cross-legged, holding a cup and accompanied by two attendants (a familiar theme in Sasanian and Islamic art).

Estimate: GBP 180000 - 220000