page_title: Star and crescent
section_title: Iran (Persia)
hierarchical_section_title: Star and crescent / History / Classical antiquity / Iran (Persia)
caption_attribution_description: English: Golden coin of Kavadh I, an Sasanian king.
context_page_description: The star and crescent is an iconographic symbol used in various historical contexts, but is best known as a symbol of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. It is also often considered as a symbol of Islam by extension. It developed in the iconography of the Hellenistic period in the Kingdom of Pontus, the Bosporan Kingdom and notably the city of Byzantium by the 2nd century BCE. It is the conjoined representation of a crescent and a star, both elements have a long prior history in the iconography of the Ancient Near East as representing either the Sun and Moon or the Moon and Morning Star. Coins with crescent and star symbols represented separately have a longer history, with possible ties to older Mesopotamian iconography. The star, or Sun, is often shown within the arc of the crescent; In numismatics in particular, the term crescent and pellet is used in cases where the star is simplified to a single dot.
  The combination is found comparatively rarely in late medieval and early modern heraldry. It rose to prominence with its adoption as the flag and emblem of the Ottoman Empire and some of its administrative divisions and later in the 19th-century Westernizing tanzimat.
context_section_description: The star and crescent symbol appears on some coins of the Parthian vassal kingdom of Elymais in the late 1st century CE.
  The same symbol is present in coins that are possibly associated with Orodes I of Parthia (1st century BCE). In the 2nd century CE, some Parthian coins show a simplified "pellet within crescent" symbol.
  The star and crescent motif appears on the margin of Sassanid coins in the 5th century.
  Sassanid rulers also appear to have used crowns featuring a crescent,  sphere and crescent, or star and crescent.
  Use of the star-and-crescent combination apparently goes back to the earlier appearance of a star and a crescent on Parthian coins, first under King Orodes II (1st century BCE). In these coins, the two symbols occur separately, on either side of the king's head, and not yet in their combined star-and-crescent form.
  Such coins are also found further afield in Greater Persia, by the end of the 1st century CE in a coin issues by the Western Satraps ruler Chashtana. 
  This arrangement is likely inherited from its Ancient Near Eastern predecessors; the star and crescent symbols are not frequently found in Achaemenid iconography, but they are present in some cylinder seals of the Achaemenid era.
  Ayatollahi (2003) attempts to connect the modern adoption as an "Islamic symbol" to Sassanid coins remaining in circulation after the Islamic conquest
  
  although there is no evidence for any connection of the symbol with Islam or the Ottomans prior to its adoption in Ottoman flags in the late 18th century.
caption: A coin of Sassanid king Kavadh I (r. 488–531). Kavadh was the first Sassanid ruler to introduce star-and-crescent motifs as decorations on the margin of the obverse side of his coins. Note the continued use of the star and the crescent appearing on either side of the king's head.
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