In 1975, Ariel Berman published a short article concerning the earliest
Ottoman coinage of Egypt, based on a few specimens he had been able to
purchase locally in Jerusalem and one or two others seen in private
collections1. Coinage from this brief period of early Ottoman rule in Egypt had
received little notice from numismatists and historians in the past and
neither has much further study been done up to the present day. Berman is
the first person of whom I am aware who actually looked at the coins in
comparison with textual sources concerning conditions in the first decade
after the Ottoman conquest.
