BELOVSKY HOARD OF KUFIC DIRHAMS DATED FIRST QUARTER OF THE 10TH CENTURY FROM THE KURSK REGION

Abstract

A hoard consisting of 107 Kufic dirhams discovered in Belovsky district was submitted to the administration of Kursk Museum of Archaeology in late 2007. Unfortunately, this hoard was not acquired by the KMA, and only the files with the scanned copies of its 103 dirhams with no indication of the weight of the coins preserved in the funds of the museum. The hoard contained 12 Abbasid coins, 39 Samanid coins, and 52 Bolgar imitations. The two most significant features of the Belovsky hoard was the presence of 50.5 % imitations [46.6 % (47 copies) of which were Bolgar], and the fact that the same number of coins were cut in circles. In order to determine the weighting standard of the cut-outs, at first the dimensions of all dirhams from the hoard were initially determined on the basis of the scans. The accuracy of obtained results was verified by comparing them with the dimensions of a 10-fold number of dirhams corresponding to the same minting intervals from the dirhams discovered in Estonia after I. Leymus’ Silloga in 2007. Subsequently, the sizes of 91 Samanid coins and their imitations were used as the basis for bimodal histograms with maxima at 26.5 mm for whole dirhams and 22 mm for round cuttings. A simple calculation of this value allowed to determine the weighing standard of the round cutting for the hoard with terminus post quem = 311/323 in 1.95 g. As it turned out, this is the largest and earliest value for the three quarters of a century during which the northeners maintained monetary circulation in their domestic territory.