Crimea: A History in 8 Coins (boxed collection)

When Batu Khan, founder of the Golden Horde, drove the Kyivan Rus’ off the Tauric peninsula in 1238, he established a provincial capital there called Qirim. The Genoese, who in the 13th century maintained Black Sea settlements in modern-day Kerch and Feodosia, pronounced that Turkic word with an Italian accent: Crimea.-At the siege of Kaffa a century later, those two powers fought for control of the peninsula. When plague decimated their ranks, the Mongols got creative, catapulting pathogenic corpses over the city walls. It was like a scene from a High Middle Ages horror movie. Terrified Genoese sailors high-tailed it out of there. And that’s how the Black Death spread from the Siberian steppes to Western Europe.-By 1347—a century before the Crimean Khanate was established—Crimea had already been controlled by the Persians, the Scythians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Trebizond Empire, the Venetians, and the aforementioned Kievan Rus’—ancestors of today’s Ukrainians—and would in turn fall to the Ottomans, the Russians, the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Soviets again, before reverting to Ukraine in 1954. The British and French also had designs on the peninsula, home to the Crimean War of the mid-19th century that made Florence Nightingale famous. All of those peoples left an imprint on Crimea, adding to its rich and diverse cultural history. In the third decade of the 21st century, the war-torn peninsula is once again a battleground, as Ukraine seeks to repulse the Russian occupiers.–This remarkable collection is a history of Crimea in coins:–1/ Roman Empire, bronze, Constantius II, 4th century-2/ Byzantine bronze 12 nummi, Heraclius, 7th century-3/ Crimean Khanate, silver akce, 15th-16th century-4/ Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hamid I, billon para, 18th century-5/ Russia, copper denga, 18th century-6/ Soviet Union, copper-nickel-zinc, 50 kopek, 1960s-70s-7/ Ukrainian aluminum-bronze hryvnia, 2004-2010-8/ Russia, tombac-plated steel 10 kopek, 2010s