The srebrennik was introduced by Vladimir Sviatoslavich following his conversion to Christianity in 988 and his political marriage to the Byzantine princess Anna — the coins were almost certainly modeled on Byzantine miliaresia as a deliberate assertion of equivalence with Constantinople. They represent the first indigenous silver coinage struck in the Rus lands. Surviving examples are extraordinarily rare; most known specimens come from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century hoard discoveries in Ukraine.
Type I is the earliest of the four recognized srebrennik types and the most directly Byzantine in its conception.
The srebrennik was introduced by Vladimir Sviatoslavich following his conversion to Christianity in 988 and his political marriage to the Byzantine princess Anna — the coins were almost certainly modeled on Byzantine miliaresia as a deliberate assertion of equivalence with Constantinople. They represent the first indigenous silver coinage struck in the Rus lands. Surviving examples are extraordinarily rare; most known specimens come from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century hoard discoveries in Ukraine.
Type I is the earliest of the four recognized srebrennik types and the most directly Byzantine in its conception.