Dirham 'Zoomorphic type' - anepigraphic Bulghar mint

The anepigraphic zoomorphic dirhams of the Bulghar mint occupy a genuinely odd corner of Golden Horde numismatics. Struck at Bulghar on the Volga — the Horde's most productive northern mint — these pieces abandon the Arabic inscriptions standard to Islamic coinage entirely, substituting animal imagery with no text identifying ruler or authority. Whether this reflects a deliberate concession to a non-literate local market, a transitional administrative gap, or something else remains unresolved among specialists.

Sinochkin's attribution and the Zeno corpus place them firmly in the late 13th to early 14th century window, a period of succession instability following Möngke Temür's death in 1280.