CILICIAN ARMENIA, Hetoum I, 1226-1270, Large AE Tank, Lion Throne, Sis, Crusades For Sale

CILICIAN ARMENIA, Hetoum I, 1226-1270, AE tank (28mm, 7.77gm), Sis mint, undated, Armenian legends. O: King seated on lion throne, holding scepter and globus cruciger. R: Cross potent with small saltire; star at end of legend. Bedoukian 1348v (no star); cf. Nercessian 354. Very Fine, decent strike, brown patina.

When the Seljuq Turks occupied Armenia, refugees fled to Cilicia on the southern coast of Anatolia and in about the year 1080, founded a new Armenian principality. Hetoum (Hethum) I, 1226-1270, was a major player in the political struggles and shifting alliances of theCrusader Era. Historian René Grousset writes: “History must hail in him one of the most lucid, one of the most powerful political geniuses of the Middle Ages.” When the Mongols threatened in 1247, Hetoum accepted vassal status and encouraged his Crusader allies to do the same. In 1254, he traveled across Asia to meet with the Great Khan Möngke at Karakorum in Mongolia. During the last years of Hetoum’s reign, his alliance with the Mongols resulted in increasing hostility from the Egyptian Mamluks, who invaded Cilicia in 1266 with disastrous results for the Armenians. Discouraged, Hetoum abdicated in 1269 and retired to monastic life. He passed away on October 28, 1270.

TERMS OF SALE

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