Ashrafi - Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Barsbay

Barsbay's reign marked a deliberate reassertion of Mamluk economic control over the eastern Mediterranean spice and luxury trades. In 1428 he seized Cyprus — the first and only time a Mamluk sultan conquered a Christian kingdom — extracting a ransom for the captured Lusignan king and imposing tributary status on the island. The gold flowing through Alexandria during these years funded exactly the kind of royal expenditure these ashrafi issues were minted to facilitate.

Barsbay also moved aggressively to monopolize the sugar and pepper trades, expelling Venetian and Genoese merchants from preferential arrangements they had held for generations. The ashrafi itself was his standardized response to Venetian ducats circulating in Levantine markets.