Saffarids of Sistan, A short lived later ruler of a local dynasty

[THCoins]

The Saffarids of Sistan were a later branch of the Saffarids. The great Saffarid dynasty had come to an end thanks to the Ghaznavids.
The Nasrid family clan took over control of the Sistan/Nimruz area as Ghaznavid, and later Ghorid, vasals. The best known Nasrid ruler was Taj-Ud-Din Harb. He had a long reign from 1167 to 1215AD. His coinage is quite abundant. Several types have been shown on the forum before.
After Taj-ud-din Harb, a number of short lived rulers filled the short interlude to the invasion of the Mongols around 1222AD, which brought an end to the dynasty.
Below is a coin of one of these rulers, Taj-ud-din Nasr bin Bahramshah. He was put on the throne by the local nobles in 1221, bus soon replaced by his brother Rukn-ud-din Abu Mansur. Apart from this, not much is known of this historic figure. His coinage is easily recognized as "typically" Sistan, but it is scarce. Though a bit off-centre, most of the inscription is very nicely readable.

BI 17 mm max, 2.54 gr, Tye#127

[Figleaf]

Bad idea to stand in the way of a Mongol army. Genghis Khan had a simple system. The day they arrived, they erected a white tent. If the city surrendered, the population was spared. The day after, the white tent was replaced by a red tent. If the city surrendered, "only" the males of fighting age would be killed. Thereafter, a black tent went up: a promise that everyone would be killed. Several cities were black-tented. Sistan was one of them.

Peter

[EWC]

Bad idea to stand in the way of a Mongol army. Genghis Khan had a simple system. The day they arrived, they erected a white tent. If the city surrendered, the population was spared. The day after, the white tent was replaced by a red tent. If the city surrendered, "only" the males of fighting age would be killed. Thereafter, a black tent went up: a promise that everyone would be killed. Several cities were black-tented. Sistan was one of them.

I never heard about this story before.  I would be interested to get a source, prior to the 21st century. 

A Wiki citation leads us to Tamerlane rather than Ghengis Khan - but that 1998 text itself gives no earlier source. 

[THCoins]

I also have my doubts on the factual basis of this Mongol siege story. I believe this idea was popularized thanks to a book by Conn Iggulden; Genghis, birth of an empire (2008). I could not find any reference to contemporary 13th century reports.

[Figleaf]

Source is some popular article I apparently deleted from my hard disk. Maybe it got the idea from the novel. Don't know. I do read that Iggulden used The secret history of the Mongols, but that's no guarantee, of course. Guarantees must be paid for. Anyway, se non è vero è bene trovato and the fact is that Sistan was sacked by the Mongols.

Peter

[Figleaf]

Just found out that I have Iggulden's book Lords of the bow in my library, so it may indeed have come from there. In the Historical Note at the end, Iggulden writes: "The system of white tent, red tent, black tent, was used by Genghis as I have described...". He obviously read more about Genghis than I did, so I suggest you contact him through his web sites. There is a list of them here.

Peter

[Figleaf]

Followed my own advice and fired off a short email. I'll keep you informed.

Peter

[Tariq]

Kindly help in identifying this coin

Weight 2.2 gram
Diameter 13 mm

Thank you

[THCoins]

Nice specimen of a scarce coin !

Saffarids of Sistan in name of Taj-ud-din Nasr bin Bahramshah 1221 AD.
I showed one recently here. But yours is the better in quality. If you don't mind i will merge it to the other thread to have the two together ?

Anthony

[Tariq]

Thank you very much for this help.

Sure you can merge this.

[THCoins]

Done, merged the two together !

[Figleaf]

Received the following answer to my query:

It’s not Conn’s reference, but I have done a quick search and one reference that might be helpful is here:
Stewart, William (1998). Dictionary of images and symbols in counselling (1st ed.). Jessica Kingsley. p. 105. ISBN 1-85302-351-5.

Part of the text of the book is available in Google books, but page 105 is not. Murphy's law...

Peter

[THCoins]

This reference seems to be of not much use. Looking at the treatment of other lemmas it just touches each subject in one paragraph. Likely the interesting subject is "colour". It does not reference many primary sources in the other lemmas. So not much hope that this will provide any convincing evidence.