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help understanding the dating of turkish coins
bronco2078
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I'm looking for links to help me study how to recognize the different dates on turkish coins. I've gotten so I can read the main date , say 1327 or 1299 or whatever but how do I tell a 1327//4 from a 1327//6 ?
maybe there is a thread on the forum about this someone could link to? I have tried searching but i doesn't work for me very well
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For most Ottoman Turkish coins, the year of rule can be on the same side as the ascension year at the top or on the opposite side towards the bottom below the toughra.
Highly enthusiastic about world coins, contemporary circulating counterfeits and unusual stuff
Here's an example, an AH1293//23 Kurush ...
The AH1293 is on the right image, and the 23 is on the left image. Not sure which is Obverse and which is Reverse.
My Type Set
I use Galloway's Illustrated Coin Dating Guide for the eastern world. Inexpensive and extremely useful. Until you get it, download the Arabic Number System. Better yet, get the Krause Catalogue along with the dating guide.
This all started when I found a turkish cold coin in the melt bucket at the LCS and I started looking through krause trying to match it up. I have a pile of older krause books and I figured out how to decipher the main date , it didn't occur to me to flip the coin over to look for the other part.
Anyway now I'm searching ebay for deals on turkish coins and trying to make sure the sellers details are correct.
This?
https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Dating-Guide-Eastern-World/dp/1440230889
I boycott amazon so I can't buy that one , hopefully ebay will provide one soon
edited to add this I had a typo the first time i searched
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Illustrated-Coin-Dating-Guide-for-the-Eastern-World-Paperback-by-Galloway-A/273141413273?epid=117186092&hash=item3f987f3599:g:pQAAAOSwFnxaYX6W
Converting an Ottoman coin date to an AD date is not easy.
First, you need to find the AH (Islamic era) date the coin was struck in. As others have pointed out, there are two "dates" on these coins, the accession date and the regnal year. The formula is:
AH year of issue = accesion year + regnal year - 1.
You need the "minus 1" because there is no Regnal Year Zero; thus a coin dated 1255 Year 1 was actually struck in 1255; Year 2 was struck in 1256, and so forth.
Now, to get this into an AD date, you either need some complex maths or look it up on a conversion website. Because Islamic years are lunar years, 354 days long. So AD years don;t normally line up simply with AH years, and the date of Islamic new year on the AD calendar changes each year. Suppose the date we work out to be AH 1256. The mathematical formula is something like:
AD date = (AH date x (354.367 ÷ 365.2425)) + 622
But I prefer to look it up. Each volume of the Krause catalogue has an AH-AD lookup table, telling you the AD date on which Islamic new year fell for each AH year. Personally, I use this website: muslimphilosophy.com/ip/hijri.htm
Both the website and Krause table return a date: for example, AH 1256 returns "March 5, 1840". This is the date on which Islamic new year fell. This means that AH 1256 began on March 5. AH 1257 returns "Feb 23, 1841", so the year AH 1256 ran from March 5, 1840 to Feb 22, 1841. Since it mostly fell in AD 1840, coin collectors usually say "1840" as the converted date.
For years where Islamic new year falls halfway through the AD year, such as 1344 (which returns July 22 1925), then it's impossible to say whether the coin was actually struck in AD 1925 or AD 1926; it would be more technically correct to report this as "1925/6".
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
Interesting information !!!
I ordered the book and the seller shipped same day. I was pysched but then I noticed he used smart post
I was hoping it would be here I was ready to bid on a few coins but I guess I'll wait.
You'll like the book. Only trouble, unless you are constantly working with Arabic (and Chinese) coins you tend to need to relearn some of the things you learned the first time. One trick I use is once I have a coin date and ID, I go to Google and put in the attribution to see if what I came up with for my coin matches the images of other coins with the same date and Krause #.