Help Me Obi Wan - You're My Only Hope | Dehli Cut Tanka

Hi -- :) - glad you liked it.

The coin (or most of one) is proving tricky to get a handle on though.

Malcolm

Hi,

Thanks for that suggestion.

I'm not actually 100% convinced it is a coin - I don;t see any numbers (even in arabic) for a date or denomination, but the fact that it was cut leads me to suspect it was used for a coin, it is silver.

I was thinking more 14th or 15th century - possibly earlier - as cut coins seemed to be more common in that type of era.

thanks again

Malcolm

I showed this to one of my Arab students, and here's what I gathered.
On the floral design side it's a verse from the Quran. He added that Muslims don't put that on their coins. On the other side he recognized a word "shaheed" which means someone who died for Allah. His conclusion was that this artifact is Shia (which is more predominant in the East of Middle East, like Iraq, Iran).
He said when a family member leaves home sometimes they have religious message or rules of honorable conduct written on something (often it's just a piece of paper), they cut it in half, and each party (departing one and staying home one) keeps a half.
So, I guess, it's a half of a religious token of a hajj pilgrim or such that either traveled with a person or stayed home with his family.

So, my instincts weren't too far off, but clearly I didn't do a very good job of scanning through my book. Next time, I might try actually reading it.

Sure enough, there's a nice clear picture of it in Goron & Goenka. The "D" before the G/G number indicates this coin is from the Sultanate of Dehli, in case you were wondering what the name of the "country" that issued it was.

This coin, D370, is listed as being made of "billon", or low-grade silver. The monetary system of Dehli was complex, with lots of different denominations in use; tankas were issued in gold, fine silver and billon, and they all circulated side by side.

This is a cut billon coin of Muhammad Bin Tughlak,the Delhi sultan(1325-1351).Type 509 Nelson Wright and Type 1164, Standard catalogue of the Sultanate coins of India.