The Early Coinage of Central Asia by Michael Mitchiner

The Early Coinage of Central Asia by Michael Mitchiner

Hawkins Publications, 1973, 105 pages

ISBN10: 0904173011 / ISBN13: 9780904173017

Author's Preface:

The coins under discussion were all struck in what may be aptly termed the periphery of the civilised world. To the south and southwest of these regions lay the urbanised kingdoms of the Iranian-Afghan plateau that were successively ruled by Achaemenid Persian, Macedonian and Indo-Greek or Parthian sovereigns, while to the north and northeast lay the lands of the Central Asian nomads. The coinage of this buffer region, which generally lay between the Caspian Sea and the Pamir mountains, is traced from its origins in the fourth century before Christ until the time when the Mohammedans established a unified currency for the area in the period of Abbasid caliphs. The fundamental political re-organisation of this region, produced by in ingress of the migrant Yueh Chi in the second century before Christ, is emphasised and the history and coinage of this people is traced until some decades after one of their clans founded the Kushan kingdom about the time of Christ.