Owner Comments:
Third year of the reign of the first Abbasid Caliph, al Saffah ( أبو العباس عبد الله بن محمد السفّاح ), known as "the Blood-Shedder" السفّاح .
His Umayyad rival, caliph Marwan II, was defeated in February 750 at a battle on the (Great) Zab river north of Baghdad, effectively ending the Umayyad caliphate, which had ruled since 661 AD. Marwan II fled back to Damascus, which didn't welcome him, and was ultimately killed on the run in Egypt that August. All the other family members of the Umayyads were hunted down and killed except the only survivor, Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya, who escaped to the province of al-Andalus (Spain). There his remnant of the Umayyad caliphate would endure for three centuries in the Emirate of Córdoba.
Al-Saffāh established Kufa as the new capital of the caliphate, ending the dominance of Damascus in the Islamic political world, and Iraq would now become the seat of Abbasid power for many centuries.
This year was struck in 751, the year of the Battle of Talas or Battle of Artlakh between the Abbasid Caliphate along with their ally the Tibetan Empire against the Chinese Tang dynasty. In July 751 AD, Tang and Abbasid forces met in the valley of the Talas River to vie for control over the Syr Darya region of central Asia. After several days of stalemate, the Karluk Turks originally allied to the Tang defected to the Abbasids and tipped the balance of power, resulting in a Tang rout.
Historians debate whether or not Chinese prisoners captured in the aftermath of the battle brought paper-making technology to the Middle East, where it eventually spread to Europe.
How'd he get into this line of work? Well, he was the head of one branch of the Banu Hāshim from Arabia. That's a subclan of the Quraysh tribe. They might sound familiar, because they trace their lineage to Hāshim, a great-grandfather of Muhammad via 'Abbās, an uncle of Muhammad, hence the title "Abbasid" for his descendants' caliphate.
NGC has graded four of this Caliph's dinars including this coin. Two of them are in higher grades with the highest, in MS66, dated a year earlier (AH133) and being auctioned a day after this one was sold. This coin also spent time recently in the company of another AH134 dated dinar when they were submitted to NGC together. That other one is graded MS65+.