EWC3

Hello John Well there is more regarding type T 329 (Genghis/ Ghazna - pics above) on page 71 footnote 2 of "Jitals". My source for the suggestion I make about T 329 was Elliot, Vol II p. 568. I assumed at the time that Elliot was using Rashid-ud-Din - but well - I will let you check that further if you wish. So - the main problem is - you are putting up a somewhat plausible solution - but with no substanciation. The further problem with your alternative 'one stage' explanation is this - the first person to say "no" is likely to be killed which will spread more panic. So your plan is just not as clever as the two stage one Genghis (or his general on the spot) used to extract the maximum sums up front. I think the Stefan Heidemann paper on Tamerlane at Damascus is on the web. Check that out. As I best recall T. offered to spare the city for a million dirhems or some such. They paid him - he objected to their coins as only 60% fine or so - so sacked the city anyhow. Stefan surely figured this out correctly. T. knew if he went straight in they would bury their coins to spite him anyway. So he tricked them to get the million up front - got it - than sacked the city anyway - as he planned to all along. On this matter to do with the Caliph - again - where we have facts - I think we should stick close to them I think Album A1973 is probably not from the time of Genghis. Steve probably put it there as a kind of default position.......

Well of course its nice to get mentioned – as I am the Robert Tye cited above – but I am puzzled by three claims made by John Conduit (is that the one who died in 1737?) above, as follows 1) Al-Nasir Jital, recognising Genghis Khan, 1221…...It was struck in 1221 at a military base I believe this coin was struck on behalf Genghis Khan, the coin does mention the Caliph, but that seems to me merely customary practice – it really has nothing to do with the Caliph. Lutz Ilisch pointed out to me the very odd fact about these coins. They are indeed fairly common – but at the same time, they involve rather few dies. That is to say – a very large part of the issue survived. My own guess is tied in with the last point. Exceptionally Genghis or his representative struck these coins at Ghazni in connection with a one-off scheme – the inhabitants were apparently given the opportunity to buy back their own lives. So this might be a way to extract silver and gold from the inhabitants, who perhaps had to first buy these coins with their own gold and silver, before using them exclusively to buy safety. If so they were not intended for circulation – and indeed they are never found worn. As it seems the Mongols then reneged on the scheme and killed the population, it would explain why many survived. When the Mongol army moved on they just left them lying on the ground. Tamerlane did something a bit similar at Damascus 2) “The Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad, Al-Nasir, had appealed to Genghis Khan (‘Universal Ruler’) to stop what he saw as the threat of the Khwarazmian Empire along his northern border” I never saw any record of this. The standard account is that merchants carrying free passes granted by Genghis were looted and murdered by Khwarezmian border officials. Thus Genghis sought revenge. However, a different explanation could be that - later Khans held the belief that they had already been granted the earth by god – so were obliged to defeat anyone who contradicted that view. It seems not unlikely that Ghengis thought that too. Of course none of this stuff is really certain, but I would be interested to get substantive criticism. Rob Tye

At a quick look round this web group, I doubt I would plan to join. However, I will dip a toe in the water here - to test the matter. After about 20 years work on general weight standards I have come to the conclusion that most European weight standards look back to the reform of their pennies by Offa and Charlemagne in 793. In turn that reform was built of the reform of Roman gold and Persian silver by ‘Abd al-Malik in 697-8. And the back room boy for that reform was the Jew Sumair al-Yahudi. Also I see those reforms as an extension of the numismatic “war of mages” into a “war of metrology” – between Islam and Rome. This stuck me as quite an interesting matter concerning late 7th century political history, and no great surprise to find such a sort of Jewish/Islamic alliance building against Rome at that time. So I tried the idea with a few leading experts in Israel but got almost no response. Just one very eminent Israeli archaeologist replied - that Sumair never even existed. He gave no explanation of that view, and anyhow it was accompanied by a clearly incompetent evaluation of dirhem weight. (Note that back in 1960 an earlier leading Israeli expert anyhow seemed just as sure Sumair did exist). Anyhow, the work is now published, but in Germany.