With this sale, the dispersal of a collection that has profoundly influenced the study and collecting of Andalusi coinage comes to an end. For years, its specimens have contributed to the documentation of rare issues, the refinement of attributions, and the expansion of our knowledge of the monetary history of al-Andalus.
The coins that will pass into new hands tomorrow are far more than collectors’ items. They are tangible witnesses to a history that has endured through the centuries and continues to find in numismatic collecting a legitimate means of preservation, study, and transmission.
Every collection has a story. Few have contributed as significantly to the field of Andalusi numismatics as the Tonegawa Collection.
See you tomorrow at Áureo & Calicó.
Almoravids. AH 495. Yusuf ibn Tashfin. Qurtuba (Cordoba). Dinar. Unprecedented. (J.J.G. catalogues it as no. 2600, but places it in the type naming the heir Ali). Very nice. It’s the only known example. 4 g. EBC.
Neither Vives nor Hazard record any Cordoban dinar of this year; in both catalogues there is a gap between AH 492 and 496, but an even more extraordinary detail of this piece is its date «fi al-muharram sanata…» (in [the month of] al-Muharram of the year…). Curiously, the very rare known cases that mention the month of striking are also found in Cordoba and within this three-year period without «normal» examples in the catalogues.
An example with date «in shawal» from AH 493 was auctioned in volume I of this Collection (lot 35), with date «in shaban» of AH 494 in volume II, and «in djumada» from AH 494 in volume III.
In this final chapter of the Tonegawa we present the two only known examples of the year AH 495: this dinar of the month of Muharram, and the one in the next lot, of the month of Safar.
