picked up a couple of budget medieval coins. i'm not familiar with this coin, just picked it up for dirt cheap so didn't ask any questions until i got it. i'm not absolutely certain of my attribution. also, i got the obverse and reverse mixed up. the obverse is right, and the reverse is left. holy roman empire archbishopric of salzburg eberhard II of regensberg 1200 - 1246 AD ar pfennig o: bishop with crosier r: bishop between crosses 19 mm 1.2g here's one i found on asearch. also note the flattened scraped areas occurring at right angles like on my coin my coin. any one know why these are on some of these coins? weight adjustment? i've been wanting to pick up an islamic coin, the text is pretty as usual, but this one also has some neat geometric patterns. qarakhanid (karakhanid) AE broad dirham ahmad b. ibrahim (jalal al din qadir khan) 1178-1210 AD 33 mm 4.1 g this coin is much larger than i expected from the sellers photo, and pretty thin. kind of reminds my of a sassanian coin in that regard. the qarakhanids were a turkic people that controlled a chunck of central asia at the time...included bukhara, what used to be sogdian territory and such. this coin was about the end of the line for the qarakhanids, they were dismantled by a persian groupknown as the khwarezmid ...and then shortly thereafter good ol' genghis khan rolled them all up, if i'm understanding all this correctly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara-Khanid_Khanate
wow bother chrismat, those are some sweet medievals!! 12th and 13th century AD (very cool additions) ... I don't have too many examples from these centuries ...
thanks guys. Islamic coins and high medieval eurpoean coins are both weak spots in my collection. I get why they don't evoke much of a response from most collectors, the crude style of European coins and the text only coins from the Islamic world...in a language westerners like myself don't understand (I have no clue what my coin says..would love to know). I kind of like the medieval coins now, the die engravers sure aren't what they were back in the ancient world...man, but the almost childish style is kind of cool. and the Islamic coins, even without cool pics of animals or kings...make full use of the very pretty script.
I fall into that category of the "text only" coins. But it doesnt matter if its islamic or modern, they dont do anything for me even if they ay be historical in some way. I need a figure of something to look at.
The Qarakhanids switched to a broad flan billon dirhem (something like 5% silver) during the "worldwide silver crisis." Yours was issued after the qaghanate split into eastern and western halves. Here's one from the Khwarezm Shahs, with the usual legends. Issued even after Khwarezm fell to the Chingizids with legends unchanged. Ala ad-din Muhammad, BI Broad flan dirhem, ca 1210's-40's.
I'll be the contrarian and say I like the Islamic dirham the best. It's a large coin with lovely patterns, and I'm always intrigued by exotic scripts, not that Arabic is that exotic, but I don't know it, so it seems exotic to me.
I like your Qarakhanid as well... the combination of the script and patterns I'm finding quite pleasing to the eye. I recently just picked up some random medieval and Islamic (Samanid) coins too, but I'm hoping they won't develop into another collecting area... I can't afford more!
New coins from rulers or places or eras you didn't already have represented in your collection are a great occasion to get out the books and read up on the people and places and enjoy the special feeling "I've got a coin from then!" I don't know who else besides coin collectors can have that tangible connection to history. Who else could have genuine artifacts from all those rulers and cultures?
