Dirham 'Aqche' - Chekreh Bulghar mint

The Chekreh Bulghar mint operated in the middle Volga region, a territory the Golden Horde had controlled since the thirteenth century but which by the early fifteenth century was slipping into fragmented succession struggles. These years — 1414 to 1416 — fall within the turbulent post-Edigü period, when competing khans cycled through power with enough speed that provincial mints sometimes struck in the name of rulers whose authority had already collapsed by the time the coins reached circulation. The aqche denomination itself reflects Anatolian monetary influence filtering northward through trade networks connecting the Horde's western territories to the Black Sea ports.