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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 816579, member: 19463&quot;]Of the areas of coin collecting that I know little about, modern coins and Islamic coins show my ignorance more than any. I&#039;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&#039;s independance to the Mongols. Numismatically he is a major player because of this coin.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><img src="http://www.pbase.com/dougsmit/image/122091486.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Islamic coin designs tend to be just legends (often in beautiful Arabic calligraphy) due to the faith&#039;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 &#039;Sun in Leo&#039; 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. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>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.&nbsp; Still it is a nice story.&nbsp; 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.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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