Marks on Arabic (?) teaspoon - help please.

Good Day All

I think the marks on this teaspoon are Arabic. The mark on the far right looks so familiar to me that I'm sure I've seen it before, but I can't remember nor can I seem to find it on the www. It doesn't seem to be one of the Egyptian or Ottoman marks shown on the internet and I've just had a look at my previous threads on this site and I don't see it there either.

The mark that looks like a 9 with a pellet next to it reminds me of the Egyptian mark for 900 grade silver, but the squiqqles should be above the 9, not at its base.

I would be grateful if any of the boffins on here could identify the marks and indicate place/date of manufacture, etc.

Michael

 

The partial mark in the center is a tughra - a Turkish ruler's mark.

https://www.925-1000.com/foreign_marks7.html

Use of the tughra ended with the end of the Ottoman Empire - early 20's.

 

Tughra marks are notoriously difficult to date, every little detail counts, and those are often worn or badly stamped.

The mark on the right is an Arabic 90 stamped upside down, so the fineness is .900.
It looks like later Egyptian marks, except the town mark is at the bottom instead of the top, like they had later.
Until 1882 Egypt was formally ruled by a viceroy appointed by the Ottoman sultan. Politically the 19th century was a confusing period, and I don't know if Egyptian silversmiths would have used a Tughra mark.
Maybe it was imported to Turkey from Egypt? Different punches at different times could also explain one being upside down.

 

Great photo, Silver. Egypt is not the only country that uses the Eastern Arabic alphabetic numerals, so thinking does not have to be limited to trying to make an Egyptian connection. For ease of viewing:



Looks like a Turkish mark, 1923 or earlier.

 

I know that, of course.
But as I said, it looks like later Egyptian marks, except the town mark is at the bottom instead of the top, like they had later. My observation concerned the similarity, that's all. I also explained the difficulty of dating Ottoman Tughra marks.
I forgot to add that some Central Asian countries used the occasional Tughra mark as well.

Where did you find that it looks like a Turkish town mark? I have info on different Ottoman tughra marks, but none on town marks, so I would love to know.
None of my current Ottoman Turkish pieces have town marks, but it is useful for future reference.

I also wonder about the oval mark. Maybe a maker's mark?

 

Sorry, it would have been clearer that I was just agreeing with what had already been said about the possibility of Turkish if I had written, It does look like a Turkish mark. I was only clarifying for OP that the 90 is not necessarily Egyptian.

I do not have a source for Turkish assay office marks, assuming that's what it is. This site used to be much better, but suspect some of the info that used to be there may have come from the Hallmarks Encyclopedia, or some source that got after them & made them take a bunch of stuff down. But if you select Turkey from the country menu, you can see what they do have: http://hallmarkwiki.com/

 

Thanks, that is the info from Tardy and the like, which I have.
I also have very blurry Tughra marks from Mehmet I to Mustafa I, and an equally blurry list of maker's marks from different Ottoman towns. Some maker's marks are oval, but those have several lines of text.

 

Is the town mark the squiggle that appears at the base of the 9?

Are you saying that at some stage in the past Egyptian marks did have the squiggle (for want of a better term) at the base, like my spoon?

 

I thought it would be Egyptian because it belonged to a person who lived in Cairo for many years during the first quarter of the last century. But of course it need not be Egyptian for, as someone pointed out elsewhere, "silver travels".

 

No that I know of, but I have very little information about 19th century Egyptian silver. The marks I do know are very different, but this spoon could be from a different region.