20 Para - Mahmud II type D/E

Tripoli's regency coinage of this period occupies an awkward administrative position: nominally Ottoman issues struck in the name of Mahmud II, but produced locally by the Karamanli dynasty that had governed the province with near-total autonomy since 1711. The Karamanlis ran Tripoli essentially as a private fiefdom, funding themselves partly through licensed piracy against European shipping — a practice the nascent United States had already gone to war over in 1801.

Billon alloy and local die-cutting give these pieces considerable variation in silver content and strike quality from one specimen to the next.