Question About Ottaman Coins

The currency system of the Ottoman Empire was complex. You will find "Ottoman" coins listed in the Krause catalogues under Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Mesopotamia/Iraq. Sometimes, the coins issued in the various parts of the empire were similar, at other times they were radically different. In this sense the Ottoman Empire was very similar to previous Islamic empires that had ruled the area, going back to the beginnings of Islam itself.

There never was a grand unified currency system covering all denominations across the entire Empire. Rich and powerful Egypt especially was often a land unto itself, with first the Mamluks and later the Khedive owing mere lip-service loyalty to the Turkish Sultan and basically running the province of Egypt as they saw fit with minimal interference from the central authority. The locals paid taxes to the local governorates, rather than the central government, so it mattered little if the currencies the various provinces used were all different.

Exactly what the relationship and exchange rate was between coins of the varying parts of the Empire, was largely left up to the moneychangers and merchants who had to deal with it. But in general, the Egyptian coinage seems to have been of better quality than their Turkish counterparts. In the 1880s, as an example, the Turkish 10 kurush silver coin weighed 12 grams of .830 fine silver, while the Egyptian equivalent, the 10 qirsh, weighed 14 grams of 0.833 fine silver. We see a similar pattern in gold coins: the Turkish 100 kurush weighs 7.2g of .917 fine gold, compared with the Egypt 100 qirsh at 8.5g of .875 gold. But since very few gold coins were issued by Egypt prior to 1880, I suspect that Turkish gold circulated there, albeit at a different face value than in Turkey, although apparently much of the international and inter-provincial business was conducted using foreign coin, rather than Ottoman coin.

Of course, by the 1880s, the political reality on the ground was that Egypt was under Anglo-French military occupation. The pretence of Egypt still being part of the Ottoman Empire was finally dissolved in 1914 when Britain and the Ottomans went to war as part of the domino effect of World War I, and Egypt formally became a British colony.