Dirham - temp. Hulagu / Abaqa Qa'an al-'Adil Type

Struck during the most turbulent decades of Ilkhanid consolidation, this type bridges the reigns of Hulagu — founder of the Ilkhanate and destroyer of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258 — and his son Abaqa, who ruled as a nominal vassal of the Great Khan in Karakorum. The epithet al-'Adil, "the Just," on a coin issued by a dynasty that had just extinguished the caliphate carries its own historical irony. Mongol rulers adopted Islamic titulature on coinage largely as administrative pragmatism in a predominantly Muslim population, not confession.