I have a number of coins of the Islamic dynasties (probably > 100) and have always relied on the attributions of the sellers. I have a number of reference books, including the excellent one by Richard Plant, which I have used to check these attributions and get some idea of what the legends on the coin say. Since I don't speak or read/write Arabic I found myself looking at the shapes of the inscriptions and trying to match them up instead of actually trying to read them. I think that works for a while on nicely preserved coins like Umayyad dirhams but once you get into copper and bronze or more poorly made silver it gets a lot harder.
I decided to try and actually learn how to read these inscriptions and to trace the words on each coin as practice. I can tell you that right from the beginning it is not easy (at least for me). There is a lot of variation in letter forms and letter/word placement on the coins. Since Arabic is a consonantal language short vowels must be indicated by diacritical marks, which are typically left out of inscriptions.
I decided to start with the coin below as the inscriptions are not too long, although there is a tughra in it (like a monogram) which is causing me some uncertainty.
Have a look - any corrections or comments are most welcome!
I believe the translation is:
Obverse:
825 AH
Murad son of Mehmed Celebi
I'm not a 100% sure on the obverse - something I discovered on this coin is that without diacritical marks Mehmed looks the same as Muhammad. I saw some other coins during my search that referred to Murad's father as Muhammad Khan?
Reverse:
May God preserve his rule
Struck [in] Serez
I notice the images are a bit large in this post - I will reduce the size as I start posting other coins.
See Zeno #9578 for comparison and Album 1302.2
Posted 07/05/2019 11:10 pm
