Notable among the silver coins of this period are those of Kai Khusru II. (1236-1245) with the Lion and Sun type (Pl. V.-i8), the horoscope of his beautiful Georgian wife whose portrait he even wished to put on his coins. It is these Turks, Seljuk, Ortukid and Ayyubid who were the "Saracen" opponents of the Crusaders, the best known of them being Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria; his silver coins and those of his family give their titles at great length to the exclusion of religious legends.
During this period and a little later some of the most beautiful coins the Muslim world has produced were being struck by the Almohads and Almoravids in western Africa. These large thin pieces of fine gold (Pl. V.-19 ) bear very long genealogical and religious legends written in a beautiful and often elaborate script. Ibn Battilta, the famous Moorish traveller, remarks that nowhere were the dinars so large and beautiful as in his native land.
In the 13th century we note that the Mongols swept through all Asia except India ?until checked on the Egyptian frontiers. Of the Mongol lines, the Khans of the Golden Horde in the north issued an extensive series of small silver coins; the greater and wealthier line of the Ilkhans of Persia struck large and hand some coins in all three metals, with the Khan's titles in Mon gol on the reverse and the Mohammedan creed in the Shia form on the obverse. In Egypt the Bahri and later the Burji Mamluks struck a series of large gold coins down to the i6th century; their silver coins are rarer. In the 14th century the great Tamerlane (A.D. 1369-1404), a distant descendant of Jenghiz Khan, revived the power of the Mongols; the majority of his coins (silver and copper) bear the name of his nominal sovereigns Suyurghatmish and Mahmud on the reverse and the kalima on the obverse. His son and ultimate successor Shah Rukh introduced a new type of dirhem, obverse kalima with the names of the first four caliphs on the margin and his titles on the reverse, which remained popu lar throughout the 15th, i6th and early i8th centuries ; gold was not struck in Asia during this period. In the meanwhile the eastern half of the Muslim world was passing to the Ottoman Turks. Their coinage of gold and silver, which became gradually baser and baser, and bronze, is monotonous in its legends of stereo typed titles and mints only. Their wealth of mints gives their coins
a certain historical interest as they trace the expansion and decline of Ottoman power in Europe, Asia and North Africa. A notable feature of the Turkish coinage is the tughra, an elaborate mono gram formed of the sultan's name and titles which occupies one side of the coin from the i6th century onwards. Latterly Con stantinople and Egypt were the only Turkish mints of importance. The coinage of Morocco rapidly degenerated in every way from the i6th century onwards, though its most recent issues struck in Paris, Berlin and Birmingham show an improvement.
Persia.—The earlier coins of the shahs of Persia are descended through the Shaibanids from those of Shah Rukh; at first they are large thin silver pieces of Central Asian style but in the i8th cen tury the fabric changes and the coins become smaller and thicker as in India. The coins, especially the larger pieces, are re markable for their fine calligraphy; the legends are usually in the form of rhyming couplets; gold is not common till the 18th cen tury. Copper was not a regal but a local issue and each city issued its own which are remarkable from the fact that each has some type, usually an animal. Some of the products of the Persian mint are of huge size ; these are pieces struck for presentation to dis tinguished officials, for example a gold piece of 8o tumans weigh ing over a pound. In the latter part of the 19th century Nasir al Din (1868-1896) abolished the provincial mints and instituted a coinage from a central mint in Tehran with European machinery. Henceforth the coins of Persia bear the portrait of the shah on the obverse and the "lion and sun" on the reverse.