Medieval Monday!

By as early as 1415 Cyprus started paying tribute to the Mamluks, including "booty" so that the Egyptian warlords could brag about victories in wars that never actually happened by parading and/or privately bragging with European parafernalia, especially armory.

Part of the booty sent around 1432 to the Mamluk sultan to acknowledge his suzerainty was this extraordinary Milanese sword, at the beginning of Renaissance weaponry.

 

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..haha right...you have to be careful in the hobby or else you're liable to have(and i've found this to be true with me) coins of the same person that was listed under another name...

 

...And if you get into medieval genealogy, the orthographic chaos just accelerates. Shakespeare spelled his own last name three ways, right? Well, he had Nothing on any number of French and Anglo-Norman families. The variations --and there can be most of half a dozen-- are effectively simultaneous, even on legal documents. You Have to know more about the geography and chronology to make sure you're looking at a record of the same people.

 

..i have this coin of that place & era...an Arabic overstrike on a Levon IV takvorin..i bought it thinking it was something else, but the knowledgeable folks here educated me...

 

Trés cool, @ominus1! (How cool? Cool enough that it called for the online French keyboard for the "trés.") Kind of involuntarily evokes that one Cilician Armenian bilingual issue, from the later 13th century.

 

..haha...i thought it was a denar of the Poor Knights of Jesus Christ when i bought it...but i'm happy with it for what it is cause its still a 'not seen everyday' piece...

 

...Since joining the forum, I've been finding out how chaotic the files for my coin .jpgs are. (Which are mostly nothing to write home about in the first place; you get dealers' photos, or, hardly an improvement, mine. Along the lines of, 'Golly, Ethel, one of them there (bottom shelf) Digital Cameras! And will you just Look at those Tall Buildings!?!' --I'm half Ozark; makes it legal to talk like that. ...And (now I can't shut up) Great-Grandpa could Kick your, er, Stuff on a fiddle.)
...Back to the ostensible subject at hand, I finally found the reverse of the coin that became my avatar.
France, Duchy of Burgundy. Hugues IV, 1218-1272. (As noted before, funly contemporaneous to Henry III. Except, Hugues actually went on crusade, twice, while Henry was talking about it.)* Denier of Dijon.
Obv. +VGO BVRGVNDIE; in field: DVX.
Rev. Cross; +DIVIONENSIS (Dijon --Yep, and Champagne is no less eponymous).
What follows is mostly reducible to how deep in the weeds you can get for references about some of this. Since Duplessy's Monnaies Feodales hasn't gotten to Burgundy yet, one has to improvise a little ...or a lot. Besides Boudeau (solid, in context, but early 20th century), I have resort to the Alde catalogue, 16 and 17 June 2011. It has a solid run of coins of Burgundy, especially 12th and 13th centuries, with citations of a Dumas article which I can only wish was easier to find online. There, this type is no. 308 and following. Alde also cites Poey d'Avant plate, CXXX1 no. 12, corresponding to the textual listing 5678. ...If Alde could cite Poey d'Avant (c. 1850's-'60's), surely it's legal to cite Boudeau (1212).
*Only once did I ever actually say this, to a Muslim of perceived Middle Eastern descent: 'Congratulations on the Crusades. You kicked our (oops, deleted).' Nope, sure enough, spontaneous gunfire was conspicuous for its absence.

 

Oooo... I often get tempted to buy new Tari. It’s hard to find decent examples at a reasonable price

Norman Italy - Sicily
Roger II, r. 1130-1154 (1140-1154)
Palermo mint, AV Taris, 12.66 mm x 1.1 grams
Obv.: Outer Cufic legend denoting date and mint, inner Cufic legend al-malik Rujar al-mu’tazz bi-llah, pellet in center of dotted circle
Rev.: Outer cufic legend denoting date and mint, in center, cross potent on shaft with pellet between IC XC NI KA
Ref.: NCKS 240, MEC 14.202, De Wit 3796

 

...welp, say howdy to one that's full blown...

 

Howdy! :<} (I don't do those green ones --to start with, it's an unhealthy shade of green)

 

@TuckHard, I only can wish I was a grain or two more literate in Chinese history. Not least in the present global context. ..But also (Thank you --No, Seriously ...wish there was an imojee for that,) more generally.

 

...Except, @lordmarcovan, that much of the beauty of the Norman series, especially over the 12th century, is its sheer eclecticism. You get not only Arabic legends, but Accurate, that's, Accurate AH dates, along with Byzantine motifs and the Star of David. ...All of these populations were there on the ground; the Normans had the common sense, even on a cultural level (I blame their Viking ancestors), to see a good thing when they had one.

 

Frankly, I don't know nearly as much Chinese history as I would like to. I have a particularly unwise habit of buying oddity coins and then researching them later, much of what I know about my Chinese coins I have found after I bought them. Sites like Zeno.ru and Numista, as well as David Hartill's book Cast Chinese Coinage, have really made Eastern coins quite accessible to the Western market and collectors like myself.

 

Yep, that's been my modus operandi for most of the time. For Chinese history, I only have a couple of old secondary sources, rescued (!!!) from library book sales.

 

A contemporary forgery of an Edward IV groat with mm. short cross fitchee (1469-70) which would place it around the time of Henry VI's restoration (c.1470) or early into the second reign. They are typically underweight (this one is 2.38g) and somewhat debased for those that have been analysed.

 

Aethelred II Helmet type penny from the unattested mint of Gothabyrig. PVLFMAER MO GEODA. Tentatively given to Castle Gotha in Cornwall, the existing numismatic evidence is up for debate, but given the style of this mint's coins is West of England and there is a gap during the reign of Cnut when he is known to have agreed a treaty with the Princes of Cornwall that they should have control west of the river Tamar (and by extension Cnut would therefore relinquish his influence and no longer be in control of the mint), this location would be a distinct possibility.

The Helmet type design is a little bold for the flans, the high relief sucking metal away making the coin too thin, so this issue is prone to cracking along the line of the cross - in this case along the helmet.

Believed 3 known, this coin ex-
Vogel 4601, Hess (Frankfurt) 16/4/1928
F Elmore Jones 320, Glendining 12-13/5/1971
E M H Norweb 1216, Spink 59, 17/6/1987.

 

Edward I class 3g2 penny from Durham episcopal mint struck under Bishop de Insula. ex E J Harris (DNW 2002) and Andrew Wayne (CNG 2012) collections.

 

@robp, every Monday, I'm stunned by your fantastic collection of medieval English coins! Those are beautiful examples.

As to my own medieval Monday contribution: we see a lot of Constantinian LRBs from the Trier mint in this forum, but how often do you see a medieval coin from that city?

Archbishopric of Trier, under Arnold II of Isenburg, AR pfennig, 1242-1259 AD. Obv: ARN–OLL’, archbishop r., mitred, holding crosier and book. Rev: TREV–ERIS; church building with three towers; star inside. 14mm, 0.64g. Ref: Weiller 154.

 

I usually keep my collection of Sicilian coins to the Norma period, but I fell in love with the sharp details on this coin (such as the plumage on the Eagle)
Kingdom of Sicily
Frederick II, r. 1197-1250 (1243)
Brindisi Mint, BL Denari, 18.64 mm x .07 grams
Obv.: +F●ROM●IPR’●SeP●AVG. Bare head right.
Rev.: +R●IERSL’●ET SICIL’. Eagle facing with head r.
Ref.: MEC 14.555-7