Denga - Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy

Dmitry Donskoy's coinage followed almost directly from his victory over Mamai at Kulikovo in 1380 — the first significant Russian defeat of Mongol forces in open battle. The timing is not coincidental. Moscow's first indigenous silver coinage emerged as an assertion of political confidence, minted in the immediate aftermath of that campaign while the political consequences were still unresolved. Tokhtamysh sacked Moscow just two years after Kulikovo, yet the coins continued.

Early Muscovite denga regularly borrowed Tatar tamgha designs and Arabic-script elements on the reverse, a pragmatic acknowledgment of continued Horde authority even as Moscow pressed its own dynastic identity onto the obverse.