The Ottoman Empire and Persia
While the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans was crumbling, a new power was growing strong in Asia Minor: the Ottoman state. The Ottomans eventually conquered the Byzantine capital in 1453, creating the Ottoman Empire. Early Ottoman silver coins are the small akçes.
With the accession of the Safavid dynasty, Persia emerged as an independent state, also in terms of language and identity. This coincided with a shift from the use of Arabic to Persian in the coins' inscriptions. The coins now tended to employ cursive and interlaced script, radically altering the appearance of the coins.
Read more about this topic: Silver Coin
Famous quotes containing the words empire and/or persia:
“Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life
Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair
And such a twain can do ‘t, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Life is a long Dardenelles, My Dear Madam, the shores whereof are bright with flowers, which we want to pluck, but the bank is too high; & so we float on & on, hoping to come to a landing-place at last—but swoop! we launch into the great sea! Yet the geographers say, even then we must not despair, because across the great sea, however desolate & vacant it may look, lie all Persia & the delicious lands roundabout Damascus.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)