quote:
eg_collector said:
...on the right pic the name "Abdul Rahman" is written...
Thank you, eg, I believe that you have provided the vital clue that has helped me solve this one.
Looking up the
list of people with that name on Wikipedia, I find in there an
Emir of Afghanistan - ruled AD 1880-1901 (AH 1297-1319).
Looking this ruler up on Zeno.ru, most of his coins look
nothing like mine, and this was also the ruler who instituted modern, machine-struck coinage. But there's one extensive series of old-style hammered half-rupees, from the Herat mint (called "dar-es-Sultan", which is presumably the word "Sultan" that eg could read).
One of the coins on Zeno has a design which, except for the lack of the dot-dotted border,
seems to be a match - I'll pinch their picture for ease of comparison:
You can see this coin has several stylistic similarities with mine - but the clincher for me is the very casually written date on both sides of the coin. On the Zeno one, the date is 1304 (though the ones and zeroes are either missing or in the wrong place). On mine, I believe the date is 1306 (= 1888/9 AD). The date numerals are at 5 to 6 o'clock, on both sides of the coin, on both this one and my one.
Looking up the Krause catalogue, the general type is listed as KM# 419, though the illustrated coin doesn't match mine as well as this Zeno one does. Krause notes that there are many blundered dates and "date mulings" reported for this type.
So in conclusion:
Afghanistan, ½ rupee 1888, KM# 419.
I'm happy to declare this one solved, unless anyone can see a problem with this hypothesis...
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 02/07/2008 09:54 am
