Dirham - Nasir al-Din Artuq Arslan

Artuq Arslan ruled Mardin for nearly five decades, an unusually long reign that coincided with the Mongol advance across the eastern Islamic world. The Artuqids survived by shrewd accommodation rather than resistance — a political calculation that kept their minting operations continuous while neighboring dynasties collapsed entirely.

The S&S Type 36 classification places this among the most extensively studied of the Artuqid copper issues, owing largely to the figural iconography this series borrowed from Byzantine and Seljuq sources. Whelan's Type III designation addresses a specific die grouping within that corpus.