Orhan Gazi's reign saw the earliest Ottoman silver coinage take shape, and the invocation of the Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir Bi'llah — dead since the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 — on these akçe reflects a deliberate legitimizing fiction that was already over a century old by the time these were struck. The Anatolian beyliks routinely cited defunct caliphal authority to shore up religious credibility, and Orhan was no different.
Orhan Gazi's reign saw the earliest Ottoman silver coinage take shape, and the invocation of the Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir Bi'llah — dead since the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 — on these akçe reflects a deliberate legitimizing fiction that was already over a century old by the time these were struck. The Anatolian beyliks routinely cited defunct caliphal authority to shore up religious credibility, and Orhan was no different.