Great Vizier,
These Romanian are horrendous. I wish you would at once have them removed
to their own appurtenances. Every morning I try to rise and meet the day, eat quietly
and read, and each morning what am I faced with? 16 drunken Romanians still up
drinking from the night before, smoking their horrid cheroots and fighting their ferrets
or mongooses or whatever it is they're doing. I know these are some orphaned
garrison from the Porte, but do please have them sent to some other yali.
Until then, I will sit here chanting in my divan:
im un in
ir al ah ab
ur ir ar
ma la
ma la
ur ir ar
ir al ah ab
im un in
im un in
ir al ah ab
ur ir ar
ma la
Yours In Infinite Supplication,
Pir 'Hzun Beg
love the tougra diagram! a few weeks ago i ran across some prints of ottoman tougras and i was inspired to try to identify an old arabic coin that i'd had since childhood. i was able to find the emperor's year of accession, which was 1255 in the islamic calendar (1839 julian date). the emperor was Abdülmecid I, and the coin was minted in the 4th year of his reign (1843) in what the ottomans called Mizr (Cairo). it's not a particularly valuable coin—it's only copper—but it's just so old and mysterious and reminding me of some exotic past that it's pretty cool. Looks pretty much like the first two on this page:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.omnicoin.com/country/Egypt?page=2&sort=year
now i want to get a bunch more weird old coins to look up and find out more about!
i've got a small collection of ancient roman coins that are more for interest than value. if you do end up finding some cool looking ottoman coins and you want to trade one, maybe we could. i like reading about the ottomans, and lately the early persian world has interested me as well.
ReplyDeletedefinitely! i think i'm going to head over to the west seattle coin shop this weekend and see what kind of inexpensive (two) bits i can find down there. i once had a shit load of early american silver coins, cause my grandfather worked as a bank teller, and when they switched from 90% silver coinage to copper/nickel amalgam he started replacing all the silver ones he got with amalgam ones from his own pocket. he had boxes and boxes of them, probably tens of thousands of dollars worth at current silver prices. i think they liquidated them with his estate after he died a few years ago. very valuable, but incredibly boring! i'm interested in historical coins of minimal value, cause they're more bang for the buck! like i have an 1842 french franc that is super worn-down and ancient looking, but it's probably not worth more than a buck or two. i have a 1945 philippines coin that is 75% silver. that one's worth more, even though it's much less visually interesting than the franc. i want to find some old eastern european coins too! i'll let you know if i find anything cool. i should start taking some pictures of the more interesting stuff. they had some cool old roman coins in the museum at caesar's palace in las vegas. but those ones were $1000s of dollars! i have a tiny little stamp collection too, mostly contemporary foreign stamps. i wish i had gotten more into stamps when i was a kid, cause when i got older, i became so interested in graphic arts and printing techniques. most of the cool graphic arts stuff i have is from reproductions in books, which is great, but not quite the same!
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