Dirham - Qaidu bin Kashin Taraz

Qaidu — grandson of Ögedei Khan — spent decades in open defiance of Kublai Khan's claim to supremacy over the Mongol world, controlling Central Asia from his base in the Chu and Talas river valleys. Taraz, the mint city here, sat directly within his power base. These dirhams funded a polity that was never fully absorbed into the Yuan orbit, making them physical artifacts of the post-Toluid fracture rather than peripheral provincial issues.

The thirty-year span reflects the difficulty of attributing undated Chagataïd issues precisely — Qaidu ruled until his death in 1301, and the series continued briefly into his successor's tenure.