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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Parthicus, post: 2798152, member: 81887&quot;]I recently won this well-preserved medieval Islamic coin from one of John Anthony&#039;s auctions:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]651568[/ATTACH] </p><p>Pishkinids, as vassals of the Ildegizids.&nbsp; AE dirham (30mm, 14.7g).&nbsp; Ahar mint.&nbsp; Mahmud ibn Pishkin II (608-623 AH/1212-1226 AD).&nbsp; Obverse: &quot;La ilah illa Allah/ Muhammad rasul Allah/ Salla Allah &#039;alihi/ al-Nasir li-Din Allah/ Amir al-Muminin.&quot;&nbsp; Reverse: &quot;Atabek al-&#039;azam/ Uzbek bin Muhammad/ malik al-amara/ Nusrat al-Din Mahmud/ bin Pishkin bin Muhammad&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp; Album 1916.</p><p><br /></p><p>Many medieval Islamic coins have only inscriptions giving religious doctrine, announcing political affiliation, and listing genealogies of rulers, and this is no exception.&nbsp; After a standard kalima &quot;There is no God but God/ Muhammad is the Messenger of God&quot; we jump right into the very complicated politics of the Muslim world in the early 13th century.</p><p><br /></p><p>The short answer to &quot;Who struck this coin&quot; is the Pishkinid dynasty of maliks (kings), which ruled from 1155 to 1231 AD.&nbsp; The dynasty was descended from a Georgian nobleman who was captured by the Seljuk Turk sultan Alp Arslan in 1068 AD and brought back to Iran as a prisoner.&nbsp; The Pishkinids, however, were not fully independent but ruled as vassals of the Ildegizid atabegs.&nbsp; The Ildegizids were a dynasty of Kipchak Turk origin who ruled over northwest Iran, Azerbaijan, and adjacent bits of Turkey, Armenia, and Iraq.&nbsp; Atabegs were originally tutors who were regents for Seljuk princes, but who often ended up staying on in power and creating independent splinter dynasties.&nbsp; The Ildegizids finally gave up the pretense of loyalty to the Seljuks in 1194.&nbsp; Other independent atabegs of the time were the Artuqids and Zangids, well known to numismatists for their extensive and fascinating pictorial coinages.&nbsp; Finally, the coin also mentions the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, al-Nasir.&nbsp; The caliphs were the successors to Muhammad as head of the Muslim community and had both temporal and spiritual authority.&nbsp; By this time, however, the temporal authority of the caliph was reduced to Baghdad itself, although most rulers still cited him on their coins.&nbsp; That&#039;s a lot of politics to fit on one coin!</p><p><br /></p><p>Like all Pishkinid coins, this was struck at Ahar, a city in the very northwest of modern Iran.&nbsp; A traveler in the early 13th century, Yaqut al-Hamawi, described the city as &quot;very flourishing despite its small size.&quot;&nbsp; There were extensive copper mines near the city, which may explain the large size of the coin and the relative commonness of Pishkinid coins despite the minor and short-lived nature of the dynasty.&nbsp; All in all, quite a nice coin that led me to several pleasant hours reading up on history.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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