Tmutarakan occupied a peculiar geographic pocket — a semi-autonomous Rus' principality wedged between the Khazar remnants and the Byzantine sphere on the Taman Peninsula — and its coinage reflects exactly that tension. Mstislav Volodimirovich, who ruled there before his famous defeat of the Kasog prince Rededya in single combat, issued these pieces in conscious imitation of Byzantine miliaresia, borrowing imperial monetary forms for a polity that was never quite Byzantine and never quite Kievan.
The Golenko classification separates this type across two die groupings, suggesting more than one production episode within the reign.
Tmutarakan occupied a peculiar geographic pocket — a semi-autonomous Rus' principality wedged between the Khazar remnants and the Byzantine sphere on the Taman Peninsula — and its coinage reflects exactly that tension. Mstislav Volodimirovich, who ruled there before his famous defeat of the Kasog prince Rededya in single combat, issued these pieces in conscious imitation of Byzantine miliaresia, borrowing imperial monetary forms for a polity that was never quite Byzantine and never quite Kievan.
The Golenko classification separates this type across two die groupings, suggesting more than one production episode within the reign.