Of the areas of coin collecting that I know little about, modern coins and Islamic coins show my ignorance more than any. I've not yet ventured into modern things but have started to pick up a few Islamic coins that I consider interesting. This one is noteworthy because it is unusual for its series. Seljuq (also spelled Seljuk) of Rum (Rome but located in what is now Turkey) KayKhusraw II (also spelled more than one way) was not a major power in the world and presided over the loss of his country's independance to the Mongols. Numismatically he is a major player because of this coin. Islamic coin designs tend to be just legends (often in beautiful Arabic calligraphy) due to the faith's prohibition of depicting living things. KayKhusraw married a Christian princess of Georgia (not the southern US state but the one south of Russia). Between their marriage and her conversion to Islam, we see this unusual pictoral type. We read two slightly different explanations. One says that the sun and lion refer to the Zodiac sign 'Sun in Leo' while others assign the sun to the princess (Tamar) and the lion to the sultan. Whichever was the case, the sultan was sufficiently fond of his wife to issue a very non-Islamic looking coin in her honor.Smaller letters on the reverse assign the coin to mint (Konya) and date (641 AH or 1243 AD) making it the last of the series and from the year that the Battle of Köse Dağ sealed the fate of the Seljuk defeat by the Mongols. These dirhams are not uncommon and come in numerous variations of mint, date and reverse legend. I find the art style of the lion and sun quite charming. In other forms, including several before this time, the sun and lion were often used symbols in the Islamic world so I can not be completely certain of the association with Tamar. Still it is a nice story. Usually 21-23mm diameter, they make a pretty addition to a general collection of early world coins. If any of you agree and would care to post your examples, I would love to see them.
Here is my example of this issue, dated AH 640 and also minted in Konya. It may never be certain whether the lion and sun refer specifically to KayKhusro and Tamar or not. But the depiction of images of possibly astrological significance was not new in the Islamic world. There are many previous issues by the Zengids, Artuqids, and others in what is modern day Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdistan that depict human or zoomorphic images. There is a theory that coin designs of the period were heavily influenced by the people in charge of engraving, who were usually Christian.
That is a nice coin. Note the three stars are all different. The top one has 6(?) dots around, the next is eight pointed while the last is six pointed. I still make no sense of the dates when I look at numeral lists but the two coins here seem to share one character at the lower right (600?). Is yours 640? Our lions seem similar but the sun rays are quite different.
With respect to the design elements like stars, I'm sure there are many varieties. I got mine partly because of the high amount of detail in them. The date is across the base of the reverse, but upside-down. The only real difference is the number 1, written as a number rather than as the word 'wahed' (that is unusual). The other symbol that looks like a 1 on your coin is actually the article 'alef' at the beginning of the arabic word 'forty'. An arabic number like '641' is written 'one and forty and six hundred'. Having said that, it is very difficult to make out those words on the coin in the first place.
I almost had to drool over this one, lol. I have some ancient silver Islamic coins too as they seem to be very ornate...more so than a lot of ancients I've seen. I think the most impressive ancients I've seen so far though are ancient Greek coins.
Beautiful coins. You say they are not uncommon? Could you recommend a reputable source? I rarely purchase coins, and don't know much about collecting, but would love to own an example like this. The imagery is almost certainly astrological: the sun and the lion were commonly used during this period to depict the Sun as the planetary lord or "ruler" of its astrological "house", Leo, a type of imagery often found on decorative metalwork. (According to the astrology of the time, each planet ruled one of the 12 signs of the zodiac.). The little stars scattered on the coin also identify the imagery as planetary/astrological. The Seljuks of Rum are famous for their figurative art, on buildings, and on so-called decorative art, so this kind of image is not that unusual for them. But it is certainly beautiful.
The date on this coin was really hard for me to even find at first because the script is so stylized. According to this Anatolian coin site http://mehmeteti.150m.com/index.htm The number 40 “arbae'en” here is written as an abbreviation. That's why it looks so peculiar (scroll down to about the middle of the page). http://mehmeteti.150m.com/dates/dates3.htm At first I couldn't even find the number 600, which is separated over on the right-hand side of the coin. It helped to scroll through some of his other examples where the dates are a little bit clearer. What a great site, unfortunately it is somewhat defective, so the Arabic script shows up written backward... gave me a real headache.
