Dirham - Alp Arslan Muhammad

Alp Arslan's reign reached its peak just three years before this coin's issue date, when his forces annihilated the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071 and captured Emperor Romanos IV — an event that opened Anatolia to Turkic settlement and permanently altered the region's demographic composition. The billon fabric of this dirham reflects the monetary degradation that plagued Seljuq coinage through the mid-eleventh century, as silver supplies struggled to keep pace with an expanding empire administered across fragmented iqta holdings.