RRR silver damma, Muhammad (c.720s/50s CE) and Rabi, Multan, Abbasids (F/T#M27)

Bust facing right, arabic "Rabi' fanasr" (Victorious Rabi') over the face // Stylized fire altar of three dots, stylized Sharada “Sri” above, “ta” to left and “pa” to right, auxiliary marks around, Arabic Muhammad Lillah ("Muhammad in God") below. 13mm, 0.67 grams, Multan mint. Fishman/Todd "The Silver Damma" Type M29.

These coins are among the earliest Multani coins giving a Muslim name - this is the exceptionally rare "transitional issue", which depicted the pre-Islamic bust with the arabic legend (naming Rabi', probably a local judge or magistrate) placed directly on the face on the obverse and the name of the Amir on the reverse. Rated RRR in Fishman/Todd, with only a few coins known to the authors.

Correlating this “Muhammad” with other Muhammads recorded in the histories is next to impossible. This name was, of course, a very common one, so it is hard to identify him with the various known Muhammads from the governors’ lists. With the exception of Muhammad bin Qasim, Sindh did not have governors named Muhammad until ca. 775 CE (there were, in fact, at least four governors named “Muhammad” during the Abbasid period, ruling in the last quarter of the 8th century CE), so Muhammad I must have been a local Amir of Multan, subject to the current governor of Sindh. Listing the name of the local Amir, and not the governor of Sindh or the Caliph, may perhaps indicate the degree of independence enjoyed by the local Multani Amir, ruling a rich city far from the centers of the Sindhi and Caliphal governments.

These coins are studied in detail in "The Silver Damma" by Fishman and Todd, now a standard catalogue for this sort of small silver coinage.