Posted 03/30/2011 8:25 pm
Arabic indeed. Ottoman Empire, Turkey (Constantinople mint) 40 para. The two large characters resembling "E." in the centre are Arabic numerals "40".
Determining the date for Ottoman coins is tricky, and requires skill at both reading Arabic numerals and a bit of math skills. The feature that looks like 1 (backwards 7) 0 0, near the bottom of the top pic, is the year that the sultan in whose name this coin was struck acceded the throne, in this case 1255 in the Islamic calendar. On the other side, below the central squiggly thing (called a "toughra" - it's actually the sultan's name, written very elaborately) is another number, which looks like "19". This is the regnal year of the sultan.
To work out the actual AD date of issue of this coin, we now need some math. Adding 1255 + 19 gives 1274, but we have to subtract 1 because 1255 was Year 1, not Year Zero. So the year of issue is 1274, Islamic calendar. Looking up a calendar conversion website or he table in the Krause catalogues, we see that AH 1274 began on 8th August 1857 - so the AD equivalent date is usually quoted as "1857/8 AD", since it could have been struck either late in 1857 or early in 1858.
Determining the date for Ottoman coins is tricky, and requires skill at both reading Arabic numerals and a bit of math skills. The feature that looks like 1 (backwards 7) 0 0, near the bottom of the top pic, is the year that the sultan in whose name this coin was struck acceded the throne, in this case 1255 in the Islamic calendar. On the other side, below the central squiggly thing (called a "toughra" - it's actually the sultan's name, written very elaborately) is another number, which looks like "19". This is the regnal year of the sultan.
To work out the actual AD date of issue of this coin, we now need some math. Adding 1255 + 19 gives 1274, but we have to subtract 1 because 1255 was Year 1, not Year Zero. So the year of issue is 1274, Islamic calendar. Looking up a calendar conversion website or he table in the Krause catalogues, we see that AH 1274 began on 8th August 1857 - so the AD equivalent date is usually quoted as "1857/8 AD", since it could have been struck either late in 1857 or early in 1858.
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
