Azkajuvar-Abd Allah, Khwarazmshah

Azkajuvar-Abd Allah, whom the author also calls Azkajuvar II, was an Afrighid Khwarazmshah named in al-Biruni's list of the kings of Khwarazm as the one who accepted Islam. ^{1 2} His Sogdian name on the coins is read "Azkajuvar" by Livshits and "Azkasvar" by Henning. ³

His silver drachms repeat the type of his predecessor Savshafan: a beardless crowned king on the obverse with his name in Sogdian, and a horseman on the reverse surrounded by an Old Khwarezmian legend, with a tamgha above. ³ The author divides them into two groups: (A) with Khwarezmian and Sogdian scripts, and (B) adding officials' names in Arabic, the first coins struck in Khwarazm with Arabic script. ^{3 2} The Arabic names include "al-Fadl" (al-Fadl ibn Yahya the Barmakid for Tolstov, al-Fadl ibn Sulayman for others), "Ja'far", "Dhu al-Ri'asatayn", the epithet of al-Fadl ibn Sahl, "Khalid", and "Talha", that is Talha ibn Tahir, governor of Khurasan in 205–213 AH; the author takes this last as the final coin struck in Azkajuvar's name. ^{2 4 5} The Swedish History Museum holds two specimens of the "Dhu al-Ri'asatayn" type, found in Östergötland (1967) and Gotland (1906). ⁴

The author cites al-Narshakhi's History of Bukhara for Khwarazmian silver being current in Bukhara in 185/801, and reads it as a sign of Khwarazm's growing economic and political reach. ³ The Oghuz north and east of the Aral Sea used his drachms in trade and struck imitations of them. ⁶

A specimen of his group A was found in a hoard discovered near Damascus in 1950 whose latest coin is dated 131 AH (748–749), which led V. Kuleshov to attribute these drachms to Azkajuvar ibn Sabri, d. 712. ² The author dates group A to after 762. ⁷