Yirmilik - Mahmud II Kostantiniyye mint

The yirmilik — a twenty-para piece — was struck during a period when Mahmud II was aggressively dismantling the Janissary corps and restructuring Ottoman finances along European lines. The Auspicious Incident of 1826 had cleared the way for military reform, but also triggered significant monetary disruption; billon issues like this one proliferated as the treasury struggled to fund a modernizing army while silver reserves remained inadequate for full-weight coinage.

KM#596 is known with multiple tughra varieties across its production window, a consequence of the Kostantiniyye mint retooling dies repeatedly through the 1830s.