I am currently busy trying to place literally every Chinese cash coin by inscription on Wikipedia and am largely complete, however there is a cash coin created by Rashidin Khan Khoja (or Ghazi Rashid) with an Arabic inscription, Arabic is very different from Traditional Chinese and unlike Traditional Chinese I don't have much experience writing it. The coin looks like this. When I asked a Lebanese bloke to add the transliteration from David Hartill I got this: سيد غازي راشدين خان (Sayyid Ghazi Rashidin Khan) David Hartill States in "Cast Chinese Coins" that it's "Said Ghazi Rashidin Khan" but Dr. Yi Thomann and Dr. Ralf Thomann state here (http://www.chinazeug.de/c011.htm) that it's "Sayyid Ghazi Rashidin Khan". Can anyone correctly transliterate these cash coins into Arabic script and then tell me the correct Latin readings of them?
Interesting coin and question ! I know nothing about the coinage from this region and have only a basic understanding of medieval Arab. However, i think the correct answer here is: nobody nows for certain. Sayyid in Arab is spelled سيد , Sa´id is spelled سعيد , so just a small difference. The calligraphy on the one you link and various others i saw is very crude. So, it all comes to interpretation. Sayyid was mainly used as an honorary title, for descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. I have no idea whether this ruler was regarded as such. Sa´id is more a personal name. In interpretation one might also include the small word above sayyid/sa´id. I saw this transcribed as "Ithneen" إثنين, for two. If so, that also is written in a very short form. Alternatively it might be bin, بن , for "son of". If so, "bin Sa'id" would be much more logical than "bin Sayyid". Perhaps other members have knowledge on the arguments previous authors used to come to their interpretion ?
Well, this cash coin is from the 19th (nineteenth) century and was produced only briefly (as he was murdered in a coup d'étàt by an adventurer from... I think the Emirate of Bukhara? Yakub Beg), Arabic script inscriptions were already commonplace on Chinese cash coins from the region (East-Turkestan) as the Manchu government (the Qing Dynasty) added them alongside Traditional Chinese and Manchu characters. However this particular series of cash coins (well, 3 series) is notable for being exclusively in Arabic.
One of the two square holed cash coins with arabic only legends. The other is the proto Qarakhanid Malik aram yinal tegin.
Could you transliterate them into Arabic script? I've been trying to find the correct legend of the Proto-Qarakhanid coin for quite a while now.
See this article about Semirechye Proto-Qarakhanid coins. Transliteration with explanations are in the article. Kamyshev has a small section on them in his book (in Russian) on Semirechye coins. http://www.charm.ru/coins/misc/sogd-arab.shtml
