Portal:Bulgarian Empire/Selected article/9

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A golden coin of Emperor Ivan Asen II.

The Medieval Bulgarian Coins are the coins minted by the Bulgarian Emperors during the Middle Ages. In fact they all date from the Second Bulgarian Empire because there are no proofs that coins have been minted during the First Bulgarian Empire and after the fall of the Empire under Ottoman domination in 1396 (or 1422) it ceased. According to the material they were golden (perperi), silver (aspri), billon (coinage of silver and copper) and copper coins. According to their shape they were flat and hollow. The inscriptions were usually in Bulgarian language and rarely in Greek. Due to the limited space they were shortened, often written with a few letters and a special signs. In artistic point of view they continue the Byzantine tradition but they were ofter more schematic. The main means of expression were lines and dots. In the Bulgarian coins there were images which had no analogy with the Byzantine and Slav coinage which makes them unique and they could form a separate group. The coins are very important as a source for the history of the Second Bulgarian Empire.

Tsar Ivan Asen II (1218-1241) is the first Bulgarian ruler from whom there are preserved coins. It is known that his predecessors Kaloyan (1197-1207) and Boril (1207-1218) minted imitations of Byzantine coins. Although Kaloyan was given the right to mint coins by Pope Innocent III (and Boril inherited it from him) there are no preserved coins of their own and the historians assume that Ivan Asen II was the first ruler to mint coins.