4 Tari - Filippo III

Philip III of Spain ruled Sicily as an absentee monarch, with day-to-day authority delegated to a viceroy in Palermo. The 4 Tari was the workhorse denomination of Sicilian commerce during this period, circulating alongside Spanish colonial silver in a Mediterranean economy still absorbing the aftershocks of Lepanto and chronic Ottoman pressure on grain routes. Philip's reign was marked by the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain in 1609 — a catastrophic demographic and agricultural disruption whose economic ripples reached Sicilian markets directly through disrupted trade networks.

MIR 345 encompasses multiple die varieties across the eleven-year span, and attribution to a specific year of issue is rarely possible without archival cross-reference.