1 Bisti - Abbas I Safavi Yerevan mint

Abbas I established Yerevan as a Safavid administrative center following his decisive campaigns against the Ottomans in the early seventeenth century, and the mint there operated as a direct instrument of that consolidation. The bisti, a fractional silver denomination, circulated heavily in the Caucasus frontier zone where small-denomination coinage was essential for local commerce. Yerevan mint output from this period is sparse in surviving examples — the city changed hands repeatedly between Safavid and Ottoman control across the following decades, and much of the coinage was likely melted or lost during successive occupations.