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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Loong Siew, post: 2444646, member: 75799&quot;]SAUDI ARABIA: BI tawilah (larin) (3.17g) (al-Hafif), ND, Mitch-2303/04, unread Ottoman legend on both sides, Very Good to Fine. Struck in the 18th century in the name of the Ottoman sultans at Hofuf, the capital of the Ottoman province of el-Hasa in the Eastern Arabian peninsula.</p><p><br /></p><p>Whilst originating from Safavid Persia from the province of Lars (thus the word larin), the popularity as a trade coin spread across much of the Levant and also to Southern India particularly Ceylon and Maldives. There they took on a distinctive fish hook design with intelligible fantasy Persian scripts. This specimen from Eastern Arabia however is a local variant and of lower silver purity (thus billon) and thus was issued and used probably as local trade coinage or equivalent. Needless to say their low silver purity made them unpopular as trade coinage and thus their issue and circulation is thus significantly scarcer than their Persian counterparts. [ATTACH=full]510071[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]510072[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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