Dirham 'Flying duck and bows type' - anepigraphic Bulghar mint

Anepigraphic issues from the Golden Horde are genuinely unusual — the absence of inscriptions on a Muslim polity's silver coinage cuts against the dominant convention of the period, where Quranic text and ruler titulature were near-universal on struck silver. The "flying duck and bows" type belongs to a group of Bulghar mint issues that appear to draw on pre-Islamic Volga Bulgarian iconographic traditions, suggesting local workshops retained meaningful autonomy over design choices even as Mongol administrative authority tightened through the late 13th century.

At 1.3g, these are notably underweight against the contemporary Horde dirham standard, a reduction consistent with the monetary fragmentation documented across the western steppe during the succession conflicts following Möngke Temür's death in 1280.