Coin Collecting in Colonial Turkestan (From Russian Conquest to the end of the 19th Century)
The article surveys coin collecting activities in Russian colonial Turkestan during the last three decades ofthe 19. century. Material presented makes it clear, that significant acquisitions were made by central and local museums with the help of Turkestan colonial government. Even larger volume of numismatic material was in the hands of a fairly large community of coin collectors. While it is impossible to estimate the overall mass of coins produced by Central Asian soil and settled in various collections locally and around the world, we can be sure that it was in tens of thousands. Such a demand called to life a market with professional coin seekers, dealers, and even forgers. In other words, coin collecting was quite developed in colonial Turkestan. It is interesting, however, that unlike British India and some other colonial societies, Turkestan amateur numismatist did not leave us a significant bulk of scholarly writings. There are two apparent reasons for this: (1) there was a wide spread notion that numismatic publications should be written by professional scholars and (2) there were no local scholarly periodicals suitable for numismatic publications and thus there was a definite lack of publication opportunities. As result, most of the important information about such things as the topography of finds and hoard composition was lost and the study of Central Asian coins, especially those of pre-Islamic period, seriously started only in 1930s-1940s.
