© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/18747167-12341254

Journal of Persianate Studies 6 (2013) 143-152 brill.com/jps

R.R. Vasmer and His Hand-written Catalogue of Tabarestān drachms

Konstantin V. Kravtsov*The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

AbstractThe present article concerns the hand-written catalogue of Tabarestān drachms, composed by the famous Russian orientalist R.R. Vasmer (1888-1938), in the possession of the State Hermit-age Museum. The catalogue constitutes an integral part of Vasmer’s hand-written legacy, pre-served in the Numismatic Department of the State Hermitage Museum, including 8 volumes of the catalogue of pre-Mongol Islamic coins and 1 volume of the catalogue of Islamic glass weights and stamps The catalogue of Tabarestān drachms (Tabari dirhams) contains detailed descrip-tions of 129 coins: 23 specimens of which belong to the Dabuyid coinage, and 106 were struck by the ‘Abbasid Governors of Tabarestān. Despite the fact that the catalogue was com-piled between 1910 and 1916 it is still unpublished and remains a very important reference for studying the history of Tabarestān’s numismatics, in particular, and early Islamic numismatics, in general.

KeywordsTabarestān, R.R. Vasmer, The State Hermitage Museum,Tabarestān drachms, Tabari dirhams

The political system prevailing in a country is often inseparably and intimately connected to the lives of, among others, its scholars and academics. It is a tru-ism that under regimes with specific, often repressive, anti-humanistic agen-das, scholars are at a greater and more direct risk. As outstanding representatives of their respective scientific fields, under such systems, scholars tend to become at times “helpless cogs” in an often totalitarian machinery. Such systems at times try to destroy not only the physical body, but also the very intellectual and scientific heritage of a nation. The consequences could be dire indeed. There is the danger of having this heritage fall into total oblivion, or that it simply fades into the banks of memory, only to be “rediscovered” tens or even hundreds of years later. Under such types of regimes, there remain many

* The author is the Head of the Section of Ancient and Oriental Numismatics, Numismatic Department, the State Hermitage Museum.

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scholars, in various fields of enquiry, whose contribution to the sciences have not yet been properly appreciated even by their own colleagues. The present paper aims at 1) contextualizing the career of the great Russian orientalist, R.R. Vasmer (pic. 1) in the 1920s-1930s—that is during the very epoch of political repression in the Soviet Union—before proceeding to 2) give a brief synopsis of Vasmer’s little-known, and hitherto unpublished, catalogues of pre-Mongol Islamic coins in the State Hermitage collection in Russia, and especially, the section pertaining to Tabarestān drachms (Tabari dirhams) con-tained therein.

Richard Richardovich or Roman RomanovichVasmer was born on 9 Octo-ber 1888 in St. Petersburg to a German merchant Richard Julius Friedrich Vasmer and his wife Amalie Marie Julie Schaub (Blagovo, 630).1 Immediately upon his graduation from Karl May Gymnasium, in 1906, Vasmer matricu-lated into the Department of Philosophy at Leipzig University (Ivanov, 392) where he studied Turkish, Persian, and Arabic literature and languages. His chief supervisor in Leipzig during this period was Professor Gerhard Stumme (Archive of the State Hermitage, 4). The following year, in 1907, Vasmer began his studies at the University of St. Petersburg, where he eventually worked under the supervision of several great luminaries of the University and, at the time, giants of Russian orientalism, such as the historian and Turcologist, V.V. Bartold (1869-1930); the orientalist specializing in the fields of Iranian linguistics, literature, folklore and ethnography, V.A. Zhuk-ovsky (1858-1918); the Orientalist-Semitologist, P.K. Kokovtsov (1861-1942); the Arabist specializing in the history of Palestine, N.A. Mednikov (1855-1918); the Orientalist-Arabist, A.E. Schmidt (1871-1939); and finally, the Orientalist-Turcologist, A.N. Samoylovich (1880-1938)(Sverdlov, 216).

Under the strict guidance of these men, Vasmer succeeded in mastering Arabic, Arabic literature, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian language and litera-ture, Ottoman language and literature, Turkish-Tatar dialects, history of the East, history of the Ancient East, introduction to linguistics, logic and Ger-man among other disciplines (Archive of the State Hermitage, 4; Bykov, 105). When he graduated from the university in the spring of 1910, the same year, on 24 September, Vasmer entered the Numismatic Department of the Impe-rial Hermitage Museum (Archive of the State Hermitage, 4; Spassky, 191).

At the time, the Numismatic Department of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg was going through a rather difficult phase of its history. Two years prior to Vasmer’s hire in 1908, a Special Commission had been established in the museum to regulate the process of creating inventories of

1 On 16 January 1889, Vasmer was baptized as Richard Wilhelm Georg.

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museum objects. Considering the current situation in the museum, wherein the Numismatic Department had only two curators, A.K. Markov, a member of this Commission and the Head of the Numismatic Department,2 managed to get permission to hire “independent inventorizers,” i.e. supernumeraries, who would make inventories of museum objects. Among these new recruits were S.A. Gamalov-Churaev, specializing in Ancient Georgian and Armenian coins, V.M. Alekseev, a specialist of Far East numismatics, N.P. Bauer, the future curator of European coins and researcher of Russian and European numismatics and finally R.R. Vasmer.

After Vasmer took his oath of Russian citizenship on 24 September 1910 (Archive of the State Hermitage, 19), he began his tenure on staff at the Her-mitage on 1 January 1911 (Archive of the State Hermitage, 8). That same day Vasmer was recommended for the rank of Collegiate Secretary (Archive of the State Hermitage, 12), and within three years, on 3 January 1914, he was awarded the rank of Titular Councilor. He married shortly afterwards, on 26 October 1914, to the German citizen, Alida PavlovnaNipp (b. 1892) (Archive of the State Hermitage, 29, 36).

After entering the Nicholas School of Military Engineering as a cadet, in November 1915, Vasmer was drafted into the military in 1916, into the First Rear Motor Cycle Workshop unit (Archive of the State Hermitage, 49-50; Ivanov, 392). He was subsequently demobilized in January 1918 and returned to the Numismatic Department as an assistant (September 1918) and then as the keeper of Oriental coins (Archive of the State Hermitage, 115; Sverdlov, 217). After the sudden death of A.K. Markov, in 1920, Vasmer replaced the latter as the Chief Curator of Oriental Numismatics. At the same time, from 13 December 1919 until 15 December 1930, he was also appointed as a research assistant and later as the Secretary of the Committee of Numis-matics and Glyptics at the Russian (later, State) Academy of the History of Material Culture (Bykov, 105; Sverdlov, 217; Blagovo, 629). In the Russian Academy Vasmer ultimately gave more than 100 talks and papers. In 1929 he was elected a foreign member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, History and Antiquities, and on 1 October 1930 he was finally appointed the Head of the Section of Oriental numismatics. Four years later, however, on 11 March 1934, Vasmer was dismissed from the Hermitage Museum, having been arrested only months earlier, (on 10 January of the same year) by the Plenipo-tentiary Presentation of the Joint State Political Directorate in the Leningrad Military District (Archive of the State Hermitage, 121). Under Sections 58-4, 58-10 and 58-11 of Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative

2 The two curators at the time were O.F. Retowsky and A.K. Markov himself.

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Socialistic Republic, Vasmer was then charged as a “participant in the fascist counter-revolutionary organization” (Vasil’kov; Sorokina, 386). According to the resolution of the Collegium of the Joint State Political Directorate, dated 29 March 1934, Vasmer was sentenced to 10 years detention in the Correc-tive Labor Camp. He served time in Bamlag (Baikal Amur Corrective Labor Camp), then in Tashkent. In 1935 his wife tried to get permission for him to work at Tashkent museums as an orientalist-numismatist. Unfortunately, however, all her efforts were in vain, and on 22 February 1938 R.R. Vasmer died in Tashkent. It took close to two decades before Vasmer’ was rehabili-tated in 1956.

R.R. Vasmer’s first article was published in 1914 (Vasmer, 17-66). It con-cerned the description of a Kufic coin hoard found in 1912 near the village of Denis in Pereyaslavl (Kiev region) district. Unfortunately, WWI delayed the publication of Vasmer’s further works. Nevertheless, during the period between 1920 and 1934, he published an incredible number of 47 articles on Sasanian, Bactrian, Kufic, Golden Horde and Iranian coins. His chronologi-cal classification of Kufic coin hoards remains very important to this day. Besides his published works, Vasmer also left a rich, hand-written collection of works in the form of catalogues as well as notes on Kufic numismatics, especially on the history of Tabarestān numismatics. These, as of yet unpub-lished works, are preserved in the archives of the State Hermitage Museum and the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The Numismatic Department of the State Hermitage Museum has a long-standing tradition of not only keeping numismatic collections, but also archived collections. In addition to traditional textual material, the archive holds photographs, videotapes and sound recordings. These archival materials, like the numismatic and library ones, are important cultural and historical sources and constitute an important part of our intellectual heritage.

Now, among the multitude of textual documents in the archives of the Department, is Vasmer’s hand-written catalogue of early Islamic coins (pic. 2). This catalogue comprises 261 lists which include 319 pages of text, one page with registration seals (pic. 3) and one page with a table of contents (pic. 4) (This last page was undoubtedly added to the catalogue after its final compilation.) The table of contents is typewritten on a sheet of paper derived from the “Catalogue of German Postage Stamps,” dated 1939 and 1940 (pic. 5). (This sheet of paper is glued to the intertwined and laced pages of the catalogue). The catalogue has cloth-covered boards, of a deep blue cotton fab-ric. A rectangular piece of paper with cut angles, glued to the upper part of a flyleaf, bears the following inscription:

K.V. Kravtsov / Journal of Persianate Studies 6 (2013) 143-152 147

“Catalogue of the Collection of Oriental Coins of the State Hermitage Museum.”

Chapter 1. Caliph Coins of Byzantine Type Chapter 2. DubwayhidsChapter 3. Caliph Governors of TabarestānChapter 4. UmayyadsChapter 5. Abbasids: Part 1: Until the Period of Ma’mun

The smaller rectangular piece of paper, with the same inscription, is glued to the spine of the Catalogue.

Its “Table of Contents” includes the following information:

“Foreign Type Coins”

Chapter: “Byzantine type”—p. 1 (24 specimens) Chapter: “Dubwayhids”—p. 31 (23 specimens)

including:

Farrokhān—p. 31;Dād-borzmehr—p. 32;Khorshid—p. 32.

Chapter: “Caliph Governors of Tabarestān”—p. 35 (106 specimens)

including:

Khāled—p. 35;‘Omar—p. 35;Sa‘id—p. 38;Jarir—p. 40; Sulaimān—p. 41;Hāni—p. 42;Muqātel—p. 42;‘Abdallāh—p. 43;Ibrāhim—p. 43;al-Fazl b. Sahl—p. 44.

Chapter: “Umayyads”—p. 47 (447 specimens)Chapter: “ ʿAbbasid adherents”—p. 85 (8 specimens)

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Chapter: “Abbasids—p. 89 (1630 specimens)

including:

al-Saffāh—p. 89;al-Mansur—p. 93;al-Mahdi—p. 114;al-Hādi—p. 140;al-Rashid—p. 144;al-Amin—p. 203;al-Ma’mun—p. 217.

In general, the catalogue comprises the descriptions of 2,238 coins. Most of these are written in Vasmer’s hand in black ink, while some of them are made by slightly different handwriting, in blue ink (pic. 6). It is very likely that the blue ink descriptions were written somewhat later than the original ones.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to determine exactly when the catalogue was composed. It is highly probable that it was written sometime between 1910 and 1916. In Vasmer’s personal file, stored in the archive of the State Hermitage Museum, there is a paper with his biography written in his own hand and dated 12 November 1918. This document makes it clear that by the time it was produced, i.e., by 1918, Vasmer had already compiled the cata-logue of Islamic glass weights and stamps, as well as the catalogues of almost all pre-Mongol Islamic coins (coins struck during the first four centuries of Hejra), existing in the collections of the Numismatic Department. This, along with other information obtained from the same biography, would appear to confirm that Vasmer had compiled the catalogue in aforementioned period, i.e., 1910-1916. In general, the catalogue is devoted to early Islamic coins in the possession of the State Hermitage collection. As I am personally and espe-cially interested in the Tabarestān drachms (Tabari dirhams), the focus of the rest of the present article will be on the part of this numismatic catalogue which relates to Tabarestān.

This section includes 14 pages, which contain the descriptions of 129 coins. Of these, 102 descriptions are made in Vasmer’s hand, in black ink, while 27 are written in blue ink. According to the records of the “Hermitage Register of Museum Objects,” these last 27 coins came into the possession of the Hermitage Museum during the period between 1924 and 1927. Their descrip-tions, therefore, couldn’t have been included in the original text of the cata-logue compiled by Vasmer himself. It is evident that they were added later. But who made these additions to Vasmer’s original text is still an unanswered question.

K.V. Kravtsov / Journal of Persianate Studies 6 (2013) 143-152 149

The catalogue of Tabarestān drachms (Tabari dirhams) is divided, themati-cally, into two parts. The first part concerns the Dābuyid coinage, and includes descriptions of 23 drachms, as follows:

— 4 coins struck by Farrokhān and dated

63 PYE/96 AH/714-715 CE; 75 PYE/108 AH/726-727 CE (2 specimens); 76 PYE/109 AH/727-728 CE;

— 1 coin struck by Dād-Borzmehr and dated 86 PYE/120 AH/737-738 CE; — 18 coins struck with the name of Khorshid

Including

— 16 coins struck by Khorshid and dated

89 PYE/123 AH/740-741 CE; 92 PYE/126 AH/743-744 CE (2 specimens, description of the latter is added

after the Catalogue’s final compilation); 95 PYE/129 AH/746-747 CE; 97 PYE/131 AH/748-749 CE (also added after the Catalogue’s final compi-

lation); 98 PYE/132 AH/749-750 CE (2 specimens, the latter of which is added

later); 100 PYE/134 AH/751-752 CE; 101 PYE/135 AH/752-753 CE; 102 PYE/136 AH/753-754 CE (2 specimens); 103 PYE/137 AH/754-755 CE; 104 PYE/138 AH/755-756 CE; 105 PYE/139 AH/756-757 CE (added later); 106 PYE/140 AH/757-758 CE; 107 PYE/141 AH/758-759 CE; 109 PYE/143 AH/760-761 CE.

— 2 coins struck by the first ‘Abbasid Governors of Tabarestān and dated

114 PYE/148 AH/765-766 CE; 115 PYE/149 AH/766-767 CE.

The second part of the catalogue comprises descriptions of 106 dirhams struck by the Abbasid governors of Tabaristān:

— 3 coins struck by Khāled b. Barmak and dated

117 PYE/151 AH/768 CE; 118 PYE/152 AH/769 CE; 119 PYE/153 AH/770 CE.

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— 41 coins struck by ‘Omar b. al-ʿAlā and dated

120 PYE/155 AH/771-772 CE; 121 PYE/156 AH/772-773 CE (3 specimens); 122 PYE/157 PYE/773-774 CE (6 specimens, the latter added afterwards); 123 PYE/158 AH/774-775 CE (2 specimens); 124 PYE/159 AH/775-776 CE (4 specimens, the second added later); 125 PYE/160 AH/776-777 CE (2 specimens); 127 PYE/162 AH/778-779 CE (7 specimens, 2, 4 and 7 are added later); 128 PYE/163 AH/779-780 CE (5 specimens, 4 and 5 are added later); 129 PYE/164 AH/ 780-781 CE (11 specimens, 9, 10 and 11 are added later).

— 13 coins struck by Saʿid b. Da‘laj and dated

125 PYE/160 AH/776-777 CE (4 specimens, the latter is added afterwards); 126 PYE/161 AH/ 777-778 CE (7 specimens, 4-6 are added later); 127 PYE/162 AH/778-779 CE (2 specimens, the latter is added afterwards).

— 25 anonymous coins dated

130 PYE/165 AH/781-782 CE (4 specimens, 3 and 4 are added later); 132 PYE/167 AH/783-784 CE (4 specimens, 3, 4 are added later); 133 PYE/168 AH/784-785 CE (5 specimens, 3 and 5 are added); 134 PYE/169 AH/785-786 CE (3 specimens, the latter is added later); 135 PYE/170 AH/786-787 CE (4 specimens, 2 and 4 are added); 136 PYE/171 AH/787-788 CE (2 specimens, the latter is added); 137 PYE/172 AH/788-789 CE; 141 PYE/176 AH/792-793 CE; 142 PYE/177 AH/793-794 CE.

— 3 coins struck by Jarir b. Yazid and dated

135 PYE/170 AH/786-787 CE; 136 PYE/171 AH/787-788 CE; 137 PYE/172 AH/788-789 CE.

— 6 coins struck by Sulaimān b. Mansur and dated

136 PYE/171 AH/787-788 CE (2 specimens, the latter is added later); 137 PYE/172 AH/788-789 CE (4 specimens).

— 5 coins struck by Hāni b. Hāni and dated

137 PYE/172 AH/788-789 CE (3 specimens); 138 PYE/173 AH/789-790 CE (2 specimens, the latter is added afterwards).

K.V. Kravtsov / Journal of Persianate Studies 6 (2013) 143-152 151

— 4 coins struck by Muqātil and dated

138 PYE/173 AH/789-790 CE; 139 PYE/174 AH/790-791 CE (3 specimens).

— 3 coins struck by ‘Abdallāh b. Qahtaba and dated

139 PYE/174 AH/790-791 CE; 140 PYE/175 AH/791-792 CE; 141 PYE/176 AH/792-793 CE.

— 2 coins struck by Ebrāhim and dated

140 PYE/175 AH/791-792 CE; 141 PYE/176 AH/792-793 CE.

— 1 coin struck by al-Fazl b. Sahl and dated

161 PYE/197 AH/812-813 CE.

There is no doubt that Vasmer’s contribution to the studies of Tabarestān coinage in the 8th to the 9th centuries CE has been considerable. It is a great pity that so much of his work remains unpublished. Had this catalogue been published in time, its value would certainly have been on par with those of J.M. Unvala or J. Walker.

Evidently, as it stands, the text of the catalogue has become outdated and needs to be amended. Nevertheless, the catalogue itself is still a very important archival and hand-written source, a source that must constitute an integral reference for studying the history of Tabarestān’s numismatics, in particular, and early Islamic numismatics, in general.

Bibliography

Archive of the State Hermitage, R.R. Vasmer’s personal file. Fund 1, inventory 13, Nº 886.F.D. Ashnin, V.M. Alpatov, Delo “slavistov:” 30-e godi (The Slavists case: the 1930s), Moscow,

1994 (1), pp. 41, 42, 45, 86, 138, 205, 206, 230, 240, 243.F.D. Ashnin, V.M. Alpatov, “Vostokovedi v dele Rossiyskoy natsional’noi partii (Orientalists

in the Case of “Russian National Party,”) Vostok (Oriens) 5, 1994.N. Blagovo, “Vasmer,” in O. Kubitskaya, ed., Nemtsi v Rossii. Entsiklopediya 3, Moscow, 2006.A.A. Bykov, “R.R. Vasmer (1888-1938),” Sovetskaya arkheologiya 3(1968), pp. 105-106.A.A. Ivanov, “Fasmer (Vasmer) Richard Richardovich,” in Encyclopedia Iranica 9 (1999),

pp. 392-394. I.J. Krachkovsky, Izbrannie sochineniya (Selected Works), 5th vol., Moscow-Leningrad, 1958,

pp. 157, 163, 167, 180.

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D.S. Miliband, Biobibliographichesky slovar’ sovetskikh vostokovedov (Bio-Bibliographical Diction-ary of Soviet Orientalists), Moscow, 1975, p. 570.

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St. Petersburg, 1993, pp. 81, 129.I.G. Spassky, “Numizmatika v Ermitazhe. Ocherk istorii Mintskabineta—Otdela numizma-

tiki” (Numismatics in the Hermitage: Essay on the History of Coin Cabinet—Numismatic Department), Numizmatika i epigraphika 8 (1970), pp. 123-234.

M.B. Sverdlov, “R.R. Fasmer—issledovatel’ vostochnoy numizmatiki” (R.R. Vasmer—Researcher of Oriental Numismatics), Narodi Azii i Afriki 6 (1973), pp. 261-218.

J.-M. Unvala, Numismatique du Tabaristān et quelques monnaies Sassanides provenant de Suse, Paris, 1938.

Y.V. Vasil’kov, A.M. Grishina and F.F. Perchenok, “Repressirovannoe vostokovedenie: Vosto-kovedi, podvergshiesya repressiyam v 20-50-e godi” (Repressed Orientalism: Orientalists Suffered the Repressions in the 1920s-1950s), in Narodi Azii i Afriki 5 (1990), p. 103.

Y.V. Vasil’kov, M.Y. Sorokina, “Vasmer Richard Richardovich” in Y.V. Vasil’kov, M.Y. Sorokina, eds., Lyudi I sud’bi. Biobibliographichesky slovar’ vostokovedov zhertv politicheskogo terrora v sovetsky period (1917-1991), St. Petersburg, 2003, pp. 386-387.

R.R. Vasmer, “Kuficheskie monety Pereyaslavskogo klada” (Kufic coins of the Pereslavl’ hoard), Izvestiya imperatorskoy arkheologicheskoy komissii 51 (1914), pp. 17-66.

J. Walker, A Catalogue of the Muhammadan Coins in the British Museum: A Catalogue of the Arab-Sassanian coins (Umaiyad Governors in the East, Arab-Ephthalites, ʿAbbāsid Governors in Tabaristān and Bukhārā), London, 1941.

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