Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Denga - Vasily I Dmitriyevich Arabic legend imitation / Warrior right
| Issuer | Grand Principality of Moscow |
|---|---|
| Year | 1412-1420 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Rouble (1381-1534) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Imitation Arabic legend filling the entire field of the coin, rendered by a Muscovite die-cutter unfamiliar with the Arabic script, resulting in pseudo-Kufic or pseudo-Naskh characters that are decorative rather than meaningful. The design is enclosed within the irregular flan typical of hammered medieval Russian coinage. The overall arrangement loosely mirrors the calligraphic layout of contemporary Tatar Khan coinage, reflecting the political and monetary influence of the Golden Horde on early Muscovite currency. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Plain |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Vasily I inherited a Muscovite coinage tradition built almost entirely on imitation — his father Dmitry Donskoy had introduced silver denga after Kulikovo partly by copying Tatar prototypes, and the practice continued well into the 15th century. The Arabic text on these pieces is not a functional inscription but a degraded pastiche of Golden Horde legends, retained because Muscovite minters lacked Arabic literacy and because the visual authority of Tatar script still carried weight in the commercial networks of the region.
HP II#1560 places this among the later attributions in the Vasily I sequence, during a period when Moscow's mint output was irregular and die-cutting remained a craft of wildly inconsistent execution.