Larin / Tawilah ND

Reverse

Illegible inscription. It could modelled on an Ottoman coin design and so could be the side inscribed with the sultan's title, 'Sultanü'l-berreyn ve hakanü'l-bahreyn', 'sultan of the two lands and lord of the two seas'.

Edge

Folded larin

Comment

This rather enigmatic coin is the subject of some debate. It has been identified by Mitchiner and Walker as an Ottoman coin from the early eighteenth century, from Al-Hasa / Lahsa Province in today's Saudi Arabia. However, the Ottomans lost control of this region to a new local power, the Bani Khalid Emirate, in 1670, and so if this is an eighteenth century coin it could not be an Ottoman one. Van Laere's research provides the most likely answer, in that these are a local issue of the Bani Khalid Emirate, possibly using an Ottoman coin die. They were produced in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and were in circulation when the Ottoman regained control of the area in the 1870s. They are clearly related to the wider Indian Ocean larin minted in Safavid Iran, Ottoman Iraq, the Sultanate of Bijapur, the Kingdom of Kandy, and the Maldives, but were produced when the larin was being replaced with foreign trade coins. They should properly be called 'tawilah', the local name. There is still much to learn about these interesting coins.

Interesting fact