Publisher's Synopsis
This is a reference book containing a listing of rulers, along with associated information, from the late Roman Empire to 1500 A.D. It is intended to help history buffs and coin collectors place individual rules in geographic and chronological context. While "euro-centric" in focus, extensive listings of the Near East, as well as North Africa and India are also included. These listings are intended to include all of the major rulers a general reader is likely to come across in histories of the period and in coin catalogs. In addition, summary listings of various important figures such as doges, dukes, counts, bans, republics, etc. are also found in the book. Cross-reference notations are included and place names like "Spain" and "Italy" are used in the broadest possible sense to help orient the reader geographically. Simplified maps are also present. In most cases modern country names would have had no meaning to the rulers listed in this book. This book required no original scholarship. Information was obtained from readily available sources. The hope is that the generalist will not care and the specialist will have their own sources. Care was taken to ensure that all data and images are in the public domain and not subject to copyright. The illustrations are for graphic purposes only, many derived from coins, for the sole purpose of highlighting the physical features of rulers. We hope that you will find this reference as useful and entertaining as it proved to be for the authors.During the 1990s the authors dealt in historic coinage, van der Werf specialized in Roman and Greek silver and Secord in English and Byzantine coins. This book is derived from that business. Secord graduated from the University of New Mexico with degrees in Anthropology and Geology, and van der Werf graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a degree in Economics. Both authors resided in southern California at the time this book was originally prepared.
