1/2 Bisti anonymous Lion right

Kartli in 1679 was navigating the brutal reality of Safavid suzerainty, with Shah Suleiman holding effective authority over the kingdom while Georgian kings minted copper locally to meet everyday commercial needs that Persian-controlled silver could not satisfy. The anonymous attribution — no royal name on the coin — likely reflects deliberate political caution, a minted ambiguity that avoided provoking either Safavid overlords or rival Georgian factions.

The bisti itself was a fractional unit rooted in Persian monetary convention, the word deriving from the Persian *bīst* (twenty), here halved into a denomination that handled the smallest market transactions in Tiflis and surrounding trade centers.