Seljuks Of Rum Dirham

Nice example! In case you don't have the specifics,
it's Qonya mint, dated AH 640, citing the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir.
O: al-imam al-Mustansir billah amir al-mu'minin ("the imam al-Mustansir billah, commander of the faithful").
R: al-sultan al-a'zam / 'izz al-dunya wa al-din / Kaykhusraw bin Kayqubad ("the very great sultan / glory of the world and of the faith / Kaykhusraw son of Kayqubad"); mint and date in margin.

Most Islamic rulers adhere to the strict interpretation of "no graven images" edict, that this means they can't put anything on the coins except inscriptions and floral-like decorations. But apparently, there was a general exemption when it came to horoscopes. This is a horoscope coin: the sultan's favourite wife, the Georgian princess Gurju Khatun, was born in the star-sign Leo, and here on these coins we see the Sun residing in the constellation Leo.

The Artuqids had a much more liberal interpretation of the law: their attitude seems to have been that as long as it wasn't Muslims that were doing the "engraving" of the dies, making and using coins depicting human figures were OK. The Artuqids hired Christians to do the die-engraving for them.

The lion-and-sun would go on to become an enduring symbol within certain sections of the Islamic community, notably it became the royal badge of the Persian ruling family and thus the national symbol of Persia/Iran itself under the Shah.

I have one of these dirhams; it was one of my earliest mediaeval Islamic purchases.

Very nice looking coin,

A lovely coin with super detail.

My favourite astrological/astronomical coin from the Islamic series are the bronze dirhams of the Artuqid ruler Artuq Arslan I. They have the curious depiction of a centaur archer that appears to be shooting an arrow at a dragon growing out of its own tail. A curious image indeed, until you translate the astrological code: the centaur archer is of course Sagittarius, and the dragon is the astrological conventional symbol for a solar eclipse (due to the old myth that eclipses were caused by dragons eating the Sun). In AD 1201, the year Artuq Arslan came to power in Mardin, there was a solar eclipse on 27th November, visible throughout the Islamic world including Artuqid territory; the path of totality passed straight over Mecca - an obviously significant portent for any Islamic ruler. And as any astrologist would tell you, 27th November occurs in the star-sign of Sagittarius.

The Sun was actually physically in the constellation Ophiuchus when the eclipse took place; apparently, nobody told the astrologists about the Precession of the Equinoxes that moved the star-signs away from where they were when the ancients had created the zodiac over a thousand years earlier.

I don't have one of these coins yet; it's on my wantlist, and they're not too hard to obtain as they were issued throughout Artuq Arslan's reign, not just in the eclipse year. Here's one Stephen Album sold in 2021 for US$190.