Sinkiang: Kuang Hsu (1875-1908) AR ½ miscal, Yarkand, ND (KM#Y-A7.18; L&M-664)

[Quant.Geek]

Sinkiang: Kuang Hsu (1875-1908) AR ½ miscal, Yarkand, ND (KM#Y-A7.18; L&M-664)

Obv: Kuang Hsu (光緒銀錢)
Rev: Five cents (五分); Yarkand (Schache) mint name in Arabic (ياركند) and Manchurian (ᠶᡝᡵᡴᡳᠶᠠᠩ)

[Figleaf]

There are not many coins in three scripts/languages. They may all well have been issued in Asia. They are the sign of multiple nations (in the sense of gens) in one imperium. As such, they may be signs of recognition of the difference or even tolerance. Those differences are large in Sinkiang, home of the Uyghurs, now repressed cruelly and violently for those very differences, notably being majority muslims.

In spite of the Chinese characters on both sides and the squares, virtual holes, the coin does not feel Chinese. The denomination is rendered in Chinese as 5 fen, but considered to be ½ misqal. That name is a known quantity. It started out in Morocco in the second half of the 18th century as a translated name of the Spanish colonial peso. Both peso and misqal mean weight, or weighty. From there, it wormed its way to Iran and Turkey, the latter the origin of the Turkic tribes, direct kin of the Uyghurs. The coin pretends to be Chinese, but it is Turkic.

Another indication of its dual citizenship is being, as it says on the coin 銀錢, Yín qián, a silver coin, rather than 通寶 tong bao, current coin, the cash string coins. The first character, 銀 is a weight. Until quite late, China did not have silver coins at all, using ingots (tael) that went by weight instead. Not so for the Turkic tribes. They had been using silver coins since times immemorial.

Historic coins help understand the present.

Peter