4 Kharub - Selim III

Selim III's reign was defined by his ill-fated Nizam-ı Cedid reforms — a systematic attempt to modernize the Ottoman military that generated fierce resistance from the Janissaries and conservative religious factions. Tunisia, nominally under Ottoman suzerainty but effectively autonomous under the Husainid beys, struck coins acknowledging the sultan's authority while operating its own fiscal policy almost entirely independently. This billon issue belongs to that diplomatic fiction: Istanbul's name on a coin managed from Tunis.

Selim was deposed in 1807 and strangled the following year. Coins struck in his name from the provincial mints capture a reformist sultan whose authority, even symbolically, was already slipping.