Importing Foreign Coins: The "Al-Ḥijāz" Countermark on Late Ottoman Coins

Currency historians have paid little attention to the long range movement of low value coins which became current in their country of destination. In such cases countermarking was often used to control the circulation of the imported coins. This article looks briefly at a few past instances of this and then concentrates on the countermarking of Ottoman coins in al-Ḥijāz between 1921/2 and 1924.