See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

Unknown Æ - Nirtanak Farankat, without neck, facing left

Issuer Farankat, City of
Year 601-801
Type Standard circulation coin
Value Log in to see details
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Weight Log in to see details
Diameter Log in to see details
Thickness Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Technique Log in to see details
Orientation Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Stylized bust of the ruler depicted in three-quarter left-facing view, rendered without a neck, with sharply delineated hair. The effigy occupies the majority of the field and is executed in a schematic, provincial artistic style characteristic of Sogdian coinage. The flan is irregular and the relief is low, consistent with cast production techniques of the period.
Obverse script Log in to see details
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description Central field bears the tamgha (dynastic symbol) of Farankat, surrounded by a Sogdian inscription running along the periphery of the flan. The legend, partially legible due to the irregular flan and surface wear, reads 'pny `krt xwbw nyrt', translating as 'Coin made by the ruler Nirtanak'. The script and iconographic arrangement are consistent with known Sogdian civic coinage of the 7th–9th centuries.
Reverse script Log in to see details
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Edge Log in to see details
Mint Log in to see details
Mintage Log in to see details
Additional information

Farankat was a minor Sogdian urban center in the Tashkent oasis, and its civic coinage belongs to a poorly documented tradition of local bronze issues that persisted through the Arab conquest and well into the Abbasid period. The Sogdian legend reading "Nirtanak" likely encodes a ruler's name or title, though the sequence of Farankat's local lords remains only partially reconstructed from numismatic evidence alone — no contemporary written source names them reliably.

Shagalov and Kuznetsov's reference corpus remains the primary tool for attributing these issues, and even they acknowledge significant gaps.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE