New Pop-up Lecture

A Mysterious Coin Hoard from 15th century Erznkay/Erzincan

A Public Lecture by Prof. Sinclair, Visiting St. Nersess from Nicosia, Cyprus

Tuesday, November 24

7:00 PM EST

Via ZOOM

A hoard from Erznkay/Erzincan, which seems to date from shortly before AD 1441, consists mostly of coins whose inscriptions, very unusually, are in Turkish and contain names, formulae and poetic rhythms which point to Alevism (a Shiʿite-related sect) as their inspiration. The coins will be the vehicle for an exploration of Armenian society in the city, of Erznkay’s trading function, of the politics of its Turcoman masters and of the effects of the Mamluk intervention in AD 1438.

Presenter: Thomas A. Sinclair, University of Cyprus (now retired)

BA, Oxford University, Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Ph.D., University of Birmingham, UK, ‘The administration of the L. Van region under the Kara Koyunlu’. From 1993 to 2017, Department of Turkish Studies, University of Cyprus, Associate Professor. His chief works include: Eastern Turkey. An Architectural and Archaeological Survey (4 vols., 1987-90); Eastern Trade and the Mediterranean in the Late Middle Ages: Pegolotti’s Ayas-Tabriz Itinerary and its Commercial Context (2020); “The site of Tigranocerta. I” and “II”, Revue des Etudes Arméniennes 25 (1994-95), 183-254; 26 (1996-97), 51-111. “The Armenians and the Kurdish Emirs of Bitlis under the Kara Koyunlu”, in R. Hovannisian (ed.), Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces: Taron/Mush and Baghesh/Bitlis (2001), pp. 154-74; Tom Sinclair, “Armenia between the Mongols and the Ottomans”. C. Bulut (ed.), Linguistic Minorities in Turkey and Turkic-Speaking Minorities of the Peripheries (2018), pp. 409-26.