(sold for $203.0)

1595, Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmed III. Gold Sultani Altin Coin. Misr mint!

Mint Year: 1595 (AH1003)
Ruler (Sultan): Mehmed III Adli
Denomination: Gold Sultani Altin
Reference: KM-6, Pere 358, Friedberg 1.
Mint Place: Misr (today a part of Cairo City, Egypt)
Condition: Marginal damage (flattening by pressure), otherwise VF+
Material: Pure Gold!
Diameter: 21mm
Weight: 3.48gm

Obverse: Titles of the Sultan in multiple-lined kufic script.

Reverse: Kufic legends above mint place (Misr) and accession year ([1003], not visible, but assumed due to the type and ruler).

Mehmed III Adli (May 26, 1566 – December 21/22, 1603) was born at Manisa Palace a son of Murad III, whom he succeeded as sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595 until his death. His mother was his father's maternal relative Valide Sultan Safiye Sultan, originally named Sofia Baffo, a Venetian noblewoman.

Mehmed III remains notorious even in Ottoman history for having nineteen of his brothers and half brothers murdered to secure power. He also killed over twenty of his sisters as well. They were all strangled by his deaf-mutes. Mehmed III was an idle ruler, leaving government to his mother Safiye Sultan, the valide sultan. The major event of his reign was the Austro-Ottoman War in Hungary (1593–1606).

Ottoman defeats in the war caused Mehmet III to take personal command of the army, the first sultan to do so since Suleyman I. Mehmed III's armies conquered Eger in 1596 and defeated the Habsburg and Transylvanian forces at the Battle of Keresztes (Turkish for Battle of Hacova) during which the Sultan had to be dissuaded from fleeing the field halfway through the battle. The next year it was noted, "the doctors declared that the Sultan cannot leave for war on account of his bad health, produced by excesses of eating and drinking".

Mehmed III's reign saw no major setbacks for the supposedly declining Ottoman Empire. He died at Topkapi Palace, Istanbul.

He married Valide Sultan Handan Sultan, an ethnic Greek originally named Helena and the mother of Ahmed I and Mustafa I.