Egypt was under British occupation when these were struck, but the coins bore the name of the Ottoman sultan — a deliberate fiction that papered over an arrangement nobody was willing to formally name. Mehmed V had acceded in 1909 following the deposition of his brother Abdülhamid II by the Young Turk revolution, leaving him a figurehead for two empires simultaneously.
The copper-nickel alloy was a relatively recent adoption for fractional Egyptian coinage, introduced in the 1880s to replace the older bronze issues.
Egypt was under British occupation when these were struck, but the coins bore the name of the Ottoman sultan — a deliberate fiction that papered over an arrangement nobody was willing to formally name. Mehmed V had acceded in 1909 following the deposition of his brother Abdülhamid II by the Young Turk revolution, leaving him a figurehead for two empires simultaneously.
The copper-nickel alloy was a relatively recent adoption for fractional Egyptian coinage, introduced in the 1880s to replace the older bronze issues.