Asper / Akce - Philip Maria Visconti in name of Ulugh Muhammad Khan

Caffa, the Genoese trading entrepôt on the Crimean coast, operated under a carefully managed fiction of Tatar suzerainty throughout much of the fifteenth century. These aspres name Ulugh Muhammad Khan — the Jochid ruler who consolidated power over the western steppe in the early 1420s — while the issuing authority remained the commune of Caffa under its own administration. The Genoese had long understood that placing a khan's name on their coinage was the price of doing business on the Black Sea.

Philip Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, held nominal authority over Caffa through Genoese political arrangements of the period. His name appearing alongside a Tatar khan's on a Crimean silver piece captures the layered sovereignty of the colony precisely.