It was very interesting for me when I read from Shahnameh of Ferdosi (c. 935–1020) that the great ancient Persian king Khosrow II (Khosrow Parviz) says:
Be Kaisar separam hame yek be yek
Az in pas nevseshte ferestimo check
I give them all to Caesar one by one
Hereafter we send documents and cheques
It seems there were some types of modern economic relations between ancient Persian and Roman empires!
The English word cheque comes from the Arabic ṣakk (صكّ), itself the Arabicized of '(چک) pronounced check' in Persian, which is a written document or letter or note of credit Muslim merchants -and everybody else- adopted to carry out their trading. The concept of ṣakk appeared in European documents around 1220, mostly in areas neighbouring Muslim Spain and North Africa; south France and Italy.
The cheque had its origins in the ancient banking system, in which bankers would issue orders at the request of their customers, to pay money to identified payees.
The ancient Romans are believed
[4] to have used an early form of cheque known as
praescriptiones in the first century BC. During the 3rd century AD, banks in
Persia and other territories in the
Persian Empire under the
Sassanid Empire issued
letters of credit known as
chakks.