Akçe (aqče, akche) , or "asper" in Western sources, both words having the connotation of "white," is the small silver coin issued in the Balkans and Anatolia and the basic monetary unit of account in the Ottoman Empire until the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century. The best available numismatic evidence indicates that Orhan Bey, the second Ottoman ruler, issued the first akçe in 727/1326-7 in the northwest corner of Anatolia, just as Mongol hegemony in the region collapsed. The Ottomans borrowed from the Īlkhānids both the design of