Coin

Art Historical Context

This unassuming copper coin, dating from the late 11th to early 13th century, offers a tangible glimpse into the vibrant Islamic world of the medieval Middle East. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Islamic Art department and acquired through the Rogers Fund in 1939, it exemplifies everyday artifacts that doubled as portable art. Crafted during a dynamic era marked by the Seljuk Sultanate's peak the early stirrings of Mongol pressures, such coins circulated widely across empires, facilitating trade from Baghdad to Central Asia. In Islamic numismatics, copper served as the humble mediu...