It was not long before the distrust thus sown in Kara Mustafa’s mind bore fresh fruit.
To make this new Avania intelligible to the modern reader it is necessary to say something first about the fiscal chaos that reigned in seventeenth century Turkey.
The only money coined by the Grand Signor’s mint, and therefore the only money properly speaking Turkish, was the _asper_--a very small piece of _white_ (Greek _aspron_) metal, once upon a time silver and worth over 2 pence, now so much debased that it was worth about 3 farthings, and so badly made and so sadly clipped that it commanded very little esteem even at that price. The coin most generally current in the Empire was of foreign manufacture--Spanish pieces of eight, Lion dollars of Holland, the Rix dollars of Germany, the Quarts of Poland, Venetian and Hungarian sequins, French scudes, and, lately, French five-sous pieces of silver worth about 5 pence English and called by the Turks _temeens_, by the Franks _Luigini_ or _Ottavi_. These polyonymous coins had experienced many vicissitudes, and our tale is indissolubly intertwined with the history of their rise and fall in the Ottoman Empire.
First introduced about 1660 by a French mariner, they immediately acquired a great vogue among the Turks. They were bright little things, most attractive to the eye by their pretty stamp of fleurs-de-lys, most agreeable to the touch, and altogether ideal for small change. The mariner made a handsome profit out of his adventure, bartering his five-sous pieces at the rate of 8 to the dollar--getting, that is, about 5 shillings for 3s. 4d. Tempted by his success, the merchants of France began to import _temeens_ in enormous quantities, till the market was glutted, and the dealers had to pass them at 10 to the dollar. To make up for the decrease of profit, they increased the alloy; of course, that could not be effected in the Royal Mint of France: it was effected by a French lady who had the privilege of coining and who luckily bore in her coat-of-arms three fleurs-de-lys. The fraud was not detected by the Turks, and the _temeen_, debased, once more became so profitable a commodity that others stepped in to compete with the French in fraud: the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Republic of Genoa, all the petty Italian States that could by hook or by crook put in fleurs-de-lys; and those who were not fortunate enough to boast such flowers put in something else that looked more or less like them--for example, spread eagles so cunningly contrived as to need an expert in heraldic natural history to tell the difference. Never was the subtle East more grossly outwitted by the West; and the swindlers had the impudence to add ribaldry to injury by adorning their bastard coin with such legends as “_Voluit hanc Asia mercem_--That’s the stuff Asia wants,” or “_De procul pretium ejus_--Don’t look at it too closely.” Dutch, German, and English speculators joined in the nefarious traffic, so that by 1668 it was estimated that there was forty million dollars’ worth of this debased currency in Turkey, and more was coming--whole shiploads of it. Naturally, the more _temeens_ flowed in, the lower they sank in value (in 1668 they passed at Smyrna for 20 or 24 to the dollar); and the lower they sank in value, the higher rose the proportion of alloy. By gradual transmutations the original silver of the coin became almost pure copper. Rascals had the time of their lives. All men who failed as merchants became bankers, flooding the country with counterfeit silver and draining it of all the gold and genuine silver that fell into their hands.