TEHRAN – Iranian authorities have recovered 21 historical coins among some fake ones from a smuggler who wanted to cross the border northwest of the country.

“The police discovered 38 coins from a suspect at a border post in West Azarbaijan province,” a tourism official said on Sunday, CHTN reported.

“21 of the coins has historical values dating back to the Safavid and Qajar eras and the other were newly-coined replicas,” the official added.

Following the legal procedure, the historical coins were handed over to the Urmia Archaeological Museum, and the smuggler was surrendered to the judicial system for further investigation, the report said. 

Coins and coinage have a long history in Iran. About 515 BC, the first Iranian coins were ordered to be minted by Darius I, the mighty Achaemenian emperor. It bears the picture of a warrior holding a bow.

In about 220 CE the Sasanian dynasty introduced the concept of thin flan coins, issues that were struck in relief on both sides. In order not to produce intolerable stresses in the dies, since the thinner the material the more force necessary to make it flow into the recesses of the die’s design, the depth of relief on such coins was of necessity much shallower than with earlier currency. Such techniques spread by way of Byzantium to northern Europe, where the emperor Charlemagne struck thin flan deniers (small silver coins), or pennies, which became characteristic of both his own and neighboring kingdoms.

AFM