Catalog
Denga - Vasily I Dmitriyevich Beast right / Arabic legend
| Issuer | Moscow, Grand principality of |
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| Year | |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1 Denga (0.005) |
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| Obverse description | A beast depicted in profile facing right, rendered in a stylized medieval manner characteristic of early Muscovite coinage. A scorpion is shown above the beast, and a trefoil ornament appears at the beast's mouth. The Cyrillic inscription runs around or within the field, identifying the issuing prince. The design occupies the entirety of the irregularly shaped flan, typical of hammered wire-cut production. |
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| Reverse lettering | ن السلطاتو قتاهش خان خلد (Translation: Sultan Toktamysh Khan, may he be immortalized...) |
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| Additional information |
Vasily I ruled Moscow from 1389 to 1425, a period when the principality was still nominally tributary to the Golden Horde. The Arabic legends on Moscow dengas of this period are not purely decorative — they reflect the political reality of Mongol suzerainty, mimicking the coinage of the Horde to signal legitimacy within a tribute economy. Some scholars read them as garbled Tatar phrases, others as near-meaningless imitations of earlier Jochid types.
HP II#1350 places this among the more precisely catalogued varieties in Hanaberg-Petrov's corpus, though attribution within Vasily I's issues remains contested given die-link studies are ongoing.