India. Second Nezak Hun Dynasty. AR Unit. Kabul mint

Here is an interesting coin I picked up recently, all the way from what is today modern day Afghanistan. The Nezak dynasty was a local dynasty of Iranian Huns, which at some point came under the influence of the Turkic culture as it moved west towards eventual settlement in Anatolia. This particular coin is from the second dynasty, after they seemed to have broken away from Turkic influence. There really is not a lot to be known about these people, and even less about the second dynasty of the Nezaks. You can't even find a Wikipedia article on them.

However, the coin is very cool.


Second Nezak Hun Dynasty
AR Unit
Attribution: Tye 4v
Date: 850-950 AD
Obverse: Mounted horseman with standard riding right
Reverse: Humped bull left
Size: 16.26mm
Weight: 2.25 grams

I wish I could tell you more about these people, but I can't. Maybe someone here can shed some further light. Calling all Asian coin experts.

 

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These bull & horseman jitals are popular among many CoinTalkers. Doug has a nice page about them:

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/bh.html

 

AN can tell you more since that's an area he collects.


Samanta Deva (800 - 1000 A.D.)
India, Medieval Shahis
AR Jital
O: Recumbent zebu left; star, pellet, and upside-down crescent to left.
R: Horseman right, holding banner.
Kabul Mint
3.3g
18mm
Tye 14

 

Yours is very nice. I see it was issued by another people. Guess several peoples issued these locally? Anyway, I'm very glad I got one, and dirt cheap at that!

 

I saw it on Ancient Imports, you paid more than I would have.

 

It was still a very small amount of money. Let's just call it the cost of starting my lessons on medieval Indian/Afghani coinage. I'm not going to sweat it. I'm starting to learn about these and I'm sure I'd do even better next time

 

I don't have any bull & horseman jitals but just remembered this Nezak drachm which has been languishing in my collection. He's wearing quite a strange headdress, reminiscent of the headdresses sported by Sasanian king Peroz I.


Nezak Huns, Anonymous Napki Malik coinage
AR Drachm, 25 mm, 2.45 gm
Sixth Century AD
Obv: Bust right wearing headdress surmounted by bull's skull
Rev: Crude fire-altar with attendants
Ref: Göbl Hunnen Em 198.12.

It deserves more personal research than I have given it. For some reason when I start reading about Eastern coins, even articles written in English hit my brain like a foreign language and the information never seems to stick .

 

That's a type I would like to add in the near future. I like them alot. Interesting style to them.

 

I feel the way about Indian and other Asian coins. The information does not seem to compute in my brain. I figured that by getting one or two it will motivate me to learn more about these coins from India and the regions north of India. That's what I did with Islamic coins and I think I'm finally getting into them. But it took me buying my first one or two before my brain seemed to have enough interest to actually retain information and learn about them. Although I still have a lot to learn about them, I am no longer intimidated by Islamic coins . Now I love Islamic coins, and I'm sure I'll eventually feel the same about Indian coins and other Asian coins too in due time thanks to this particular coin I acquired. It's the motivation I need to sit down and do my homework on this area of numismatics.

 

Nice pickup @Sallent. Great example. I am no expert, but I have one:


Nezak Huns, Spalapati Deva
AR Jital, AD 750-850
Obv.: Horseman right holding lance.
Rev.: Bull left, Sarada script.
Reference: Tye 5

The design reminds me a bit of Celtic... but the good ole' Celts were making them a 1000 years earlier!

 

I was interested in these a few years back and never remember them being associated with the Nezak Hun coin as shown by TIF above. We called them coins of the Shahi Kings of Kabul and Gandhara. They were separated into groups including this 'Spalapati Deva' over the bull which was further divided according to the letters. This one is clearly a Tye 6 not a 4 and has very clear 'Ka' behind the horseman. This is a nice specimen. I bought many of the lesser ones I have for $5 each from a huge lot at a Baltimore show but have paid as much as $30 for some I wanted that were not included in the big group. There are rare ones that sell for a lot but some of them were in my first haul so I have not been chasing the rest. Tye 6 is one of the common ones. It is very unusual to find coins with two really good sides. The OP coin is a nice bull and well centered on both sides with readable legends. The horse has some loss of detail that keeps it from being a super coin IMHO. Later Samanta Deva types are easier to find nice.

My Tye 6.2 is quite worn but shows the three dots under the horse which I believe are also on the OP. How many collectors care about such minor variations? I do not know.


My Tye 4 is not at all a good example but it is what it is. I am still looking for Tye 1 and 2 which are not common. What I know or believe is on the page TIF linked but you will not find 'Nezak' there.


Tye numbers refer to his book Jitals which is a specialized look at the denomination and probably overkill for most. I really recommend his other, more general book, Early World Coins & Early Weight Standards as a first book for the really general collector of old coins.
http://orientalnumismaticsociety.or..._review_of_Tye_Early_World_Coins.29371420.pdf
Just don't buy it from someone who thinks it is gold. I have seen them for $25 but $50 is probably fair. Finding one in the US would be cheaper?
http://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/0952414430/

 

After seeing your website I thought this was misattributed. Thanks for providing me with the information as to the correct attribution. I may have to hunt down some of the other types eventually.

@dougsmit a million thanks for the links to the books. I'll see about finding a copy. I want to get into Indian coins, and I could use all the reading materials I can get my hands on. I realized a while back that I like being a generalist. I want Greek, RR, Roman Empire, Parthian, Sassanian, Islamic, Indian, etc. Basically, I want to learn about many cultures and own their coinage, rather than focus one one specific culture or a very narrow spanse of time to collect.

 

i have a couple of these...




and my more recent one...

 

Some are easier to ID then others, I think they changed the design making it more abstract later on.

 

Yes, and it did not help that later coins tend to be smaller in diameter than the dies so this coin is perfectly centered and missing a lot of the outer details. I believe this may have been on purpose making it impossible to make a copy die from just one coin that could strike a variety of coins. A bag full of copis all having the same centering would be obvious fakes.

 

Nice line-up ! Also nice to see new collector enthusiasm for this area.
There are in fact several Wikipedia pages which provide some information on the Kabul Shahi; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmana_Hindu_Shahis_of_Afghanistan
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabul_Shahi have some overlap, but are nice as an introductory reading.
Hope you will find that this series is not limited to the Hindi Shahi of Kabul. You can read the entire political history of the region between Kabul in Afghanistan and Delhi in India from these coins.
To show just a few:
These are two Tye#2 specimen, the earliest i have. The script on the horseman's side is in ancient Bactrian. The size and weight is a bit larger than the later standard;


Around 870AD the Kabul area is overrun by the Saffarids. After this the Jitals under the name of Khudarayaka are issued. These are the first to feature Arab script on these coins. In front of the horseman is عدل, which means "just".


Later on, the Ghaznavids come to the stage. They adopt the Jital metrology, but loose the horse, while the bull gets abstracted a bit over time.


The Gaznavids are replaced by the Ghorids:


The Ghorids loose the Afghan territory to the Khwarezm Shahs.


But Ghorid rule persists in the Delhi Area where it forms the begin of the Turks dynasty of the Sultans of Delhi, which has replaced the former Hindu Raja Dynasty of Delhi.


(Between the first and the last is about 400 years)

 

In the interest of equal time for horses, this Yildiz, a slave general of the Ghorids from Lahore, 1212-1214 AD has lost its bull. This still weighs ~3g but is more base (Tye says 18%) and much thicker than the early b/h coins. By this time the dies were smaller so you get more of the design on flan. This allows specialists to note the crescent under the horse here (Tye 201.2) as opposed to a similar coin that has a star in that position (201.1). Meaning? How many people on earth care?


Tye catalogs 481 Jitals not counting the few that get decimal point numbers like the one above. Mystified beginners in the area would have guessed there were more. What bothers me about them is the number of sellers that make no distinction between good and bad, common and rare but just price them all as traffic will bear. I guess this is the case in all coins but I don't know enough about this market to know if I should pay more of less for a coin. I choose less. This Yildiz was $4 from a very knowledgeable dealer. It would seem to be a great specialty for those who want to study more and pay less.

 

Just in case we have not driven everyone off trying to make this thread educational, lets point out that the silver jitals of the bull and horseman type were accompanied by bronzes or elephant / lion type. Nice ones are even harder to find. Who know how many AE would equal one silver? I don't.

 

I don't remember seeing this before. Have you posted it in the past?

I like it because of the prominent and easily recognizable devices.

 

The Jitals form one of my focus areas for several reasons: It is a bit outside the mainstream categories. They very nicely illustrate the intrigueing medieval history of this part of the world. And, as not many people are interested in these, very rare specimen can come very cheap. Most of my coins have cost between 2 and 5 euros a piece, only a handfull more than 15. But you have to be able to pick them from between a lot of very common low quality specimen.

One of the questions to be answered is the relation between the copper and billon coin types. Here is one of the most common copper lion/elephant types. It is in the name of Vakka Deva. Interesting thing is that there are no Vakka Deva silvers:


There are also still some things to be discovered. The coin below is a Tye#105 type issued under Ghaznavid ruler Masud III (1099-1115). Tye describes the text above the bull as "Sri Samanta Deva". While true for some subtypes, this one clearly reads "Sri Sultana Deva", which is an unpublished legend.