AE Follis 8.40g. 28mm. before AH555 Amid mint
Rectangular counterstamp 'Shams' on Byzantine anonymous follis host.
Byzantine host.
C/M: Lowick MH 9; Album 1952; Host: SB Anyonymous Class K 1901 on Class J 1900
Brown patina with some rust typical of the hoard. Nicely centered stamp. Counterstamp VF, host Good.
Mild porosity and rough adhesions.
Includes ticket citing that this coin is ex. Mardin Hoard.
'Shams' is an honorific title that doesn't refer to any single person, but Lowick suggests that this countermark was applied by Shams al-Muluk Jamal al-Din Mahmud, during the short Inalid rule of Amid (modern-day Diyarbakir, Turkey). Album lists the 'Shams' mark as 'Rare.' This example is struck on a Byzantine anonymous follis attributed to the reign of Alexius, 1081-1118 A.D., itself overstruck on an earlier anonymous follis of Alexius. The Mardin Hoard contained 361 coins with this counterstamp.
The Mardin Hoard was a large group of copper coins found before 1972 in the vacinity of Mardin in modern-day southeastern Turkey. The hoard consisted of at least 13,500 pieces, including around 2,200 Byzantine folles countermarked by local Islamic rulers, as reported by N. M. Lowick, author of 'The Mardin Hoard,' a 1977 book published to document the countermarks found on the coins. The hoard was important in further understanding patterns of circulation and countermarking of Byzantine coins still being used in lands recently claimed by Islamic rulers. Most examples are heavily worn from circulation and many are countermarked several times, some on top of each other.
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