Salâhaddîn Yûsuf Bin Eyyûbî’nin Mardin Müzesi’nde Bulunan Sikkeleri
Coins of Salah Ad-Din (Saladin) Yusuf Ibn Ayyub Found in the Mardin Museum

Summary/Abstract: Saladin (Salah ad-Din Ayyub) who was born in Tikrit in 532 (1138) participated in the campaigns against the Crusaders and achieved significant success despite his young age. When Saladin took over Egypt in 566 (1171), he gave a sermon and got coins minted in the name of the Sunnite Abbasid caliph and ended the Fatimid caliphate. He won a great victory in the war he fought against the Crusaders in Hattin in 583 (1187) by defeating the Crusader Army. A few weeks after this victory, the Sultan besieged Jerusalem and took the city back from the Crusaders on Friday, which made him a great hero of the Islamic World. With the conquest of Jerusalem, Saladin became one of the most famous heroes of the Turkish Islamic history. In the scope of the current study, we found 15 coins that have been minted in the name of Saladin. These coins are currently exhibitied in the Mardin Museum collection. This study is a preliminary attempt addressing the coins of the Saladin era about which there are very few publications available. Unfortunately, investigating all the coins in the museum collection was not possible. However, it could be possible to find many more examples in case a longer time period is dedicated to further studies. Our purpose is to pave the way for future researchers to make more comprehensive studies. In our study, coins made of two different mines, copper and silver, were found. The coins appear in two groups as coins featuring only figures and coins featuring only writings. The coins featuring figures were minted on copper and there were no examples found of silver coins featuring figures. As it is common in Medieval Age Islamic coins, the title and lakab of Saladin are incripted on the front side of the Saladin coins. To the back side of the coins, as the tradition goes, the place and date of minting and the name of the era’s caliph and his titles appear. In accordance with this, the names of al-Nasr Li-Din Allah and Al-Mustad ibn Amir are mentioned.

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