TABRIZ  ·  SEPTEMBER 1294

A state can print money.It cannot make the bazaar accept it.

In September 1294 the Ilkhanid court copied Chinese paper money, printed it in Tabriz, and made refusing it a capital offence. Prices rose more than tenfold. The bazaar emptied within days. The decree did not survive the year.

See the evidence→$CHAO

Every claim on this site links to a source you can open yourself.

reconstruction  ·  not a surviving specimen

EXHIBIT 01  ·  The Ledger

693–694 AH · 1294–1295 CE

What follows is the sequence as the sources give it. Where they disagree, both readings are printed. Entries marked contested are the ones where the record does not settle the question.

  1. Spring 1294

    An empty treasury and a proposal

    Ṣadr al-Dīn Zanjānī, the ṣāḥib-dīwān, puts the idea of paper money to the Ilkhanid court. To learn how the Chinese system actually worked, he goes to Bolad Chingsang — the Great Khan’s resident representative at the court, whom Rashīd al-Dīn calls the finest authority on Mongol history alive.

    “And this man also was so extravagant that in a very short space of time he exhausted the treasures of the kingdom of Kaijatu. […] Then he began to think out vain imaginings — that he would make new money.”
    EN↗ Continuator of Bar Hebraeus, tr. Budge, p. 496

    ↗ The Chronography of Bar HebraeusEN↗ Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-TawārīkhEN↗ Encyclopaedia IranicaEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE

  2. Before the decree

    The one objection on record

    Shiktür Noyan argues against the scheme. He is the most influential of the emirs, and his objection is disposed of not by answering it but by attributing a motive to it. The court proceeds.

    “Shiktür Noyan, the most intelligent of the amirs, said that the chao would cause ruination in the kingdom, defamation of the emperor, and dispersal of the peasantry and soldiers. Sadruddin countered that Shiktür Noyan was only trying to discourage the implementation of chao because he loved gold so much.”
    EN↗ Rashīd al-Dīn, tr. Thackston, p. 584

    ↗ Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-TawārīkhEN↗ Howorth, History of the MongolsEN↗ d’Ohsson, Histoire des MongolsFR↗ Archiv OrientálníDE

  3. 23 July 1294

    27 Shaʿbān 693

    The mission leaves for Tabriz

    Ṣadr al-Dīn sets out with the emirs Aq Buqa, Taghachar and Tammachi Inaq, arriving on 19 Ramaḍān — 13 August. In Tabriz they have paper money prepared in quantity. Roughly seven weeks pass between arrival and issue.

    “On Friday the 27th of Shaʿban [July 23, 1294] Aq Buqa, Taghachar, Sadruddin, and Tammachi Inaq set out for Tabriz to implement the chao. They arrived there on the 19th of Ramadan [August 13] and delivered the decree.”
    EN↗ Rashīd al-Dīn, tr. Thackston, p. 584

    ↗ Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-TawārīkhEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE↗ The Cambridge History of IranEN

  4. 13 August 1294

    Refusal is made a capital offence

    The proclamation goes out in Tabriz a month before a single note circulates. It has two halves, and the second is the one usually left out: it is not only illegal to refuse the paper, it is illegal to keep your silver.

    “Whosoever buyeth and selleth, and taketh and giveth without [using] Shāw shall die the death. And whosoever hath in his hand silver, and doth not carry it to the offices of the Government to be stamped therein with [the word] Shāw, and giveth it up and taketh [in exchange] Shāw shall die the death.”
    EN↗ Continuator of Bar Hebraeus, tr. Budge, p. 497

    ↗ The Chronography of Bar HebraeusEN↗ The Cambridge History of IranEN↗ Encyclopaedia IranicaEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE

  7. About a week

    Taken from motives of fear

    Compulsion produced possession, not circulation. Jahn puts it as a week of acceptance out of fear of the sword with no currency in trade at all; the Cambridge History says the same thing in the same span.

    “For a week after their first issue these notes were taken from motives of fear, but soon all trade had come to a standstill and the bazaars were completely deserted.”
    EN↗ J. A. Boyle, The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, p. 375

    ↗ The Cambridge History of IranEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE↗ The Chronography of Bar HebraeusEN

  8. Three days · two months

    contested

    How long is disputed

    This is where the record splits. The Turkish encyclopaedia says the shopkeepers of Tabriz shut their shops for three days, and elsewhere gives “a few months” and “four months” in two other entries. The contemporary Syriac chronicle says something much heavier — not three days of protest but two months in which commerce stopped.

    “And thus men remained in a state of great tribulation and indescribable difficulty for a space of two months. And Tabriz, which was the royal city of the Mongols, remained like a desolate ruin. […] For during these two months the merchants could not trade, and the roads were cut, and the khans were closed, and buying and selling ceased.”
    EN↗ Continuator of Bar Hebraeus, tr. Budge, p. 497

    ↗ The Chronography of Bar HebraeusEN↗ Encyclopaedia IranicaEN↗ The Cambridge History of IranEN↗ TDV İslâm AnsiklopedisiTR

  9. Early November 1294

    contested

    Coin first, then surrender

    The government gives way in two stages: first it authorises coin for buying food, then it abandons the edict. Jahn reasons from the two-month figure that the reversal came by the middle of Dhū’l-Ḥijja 693 at the latest — the first days of November. No source gives the date outright.

    “Every man according to his wish and according to his inclination. If he wisheth for the Shāw let him use it, and if he wisheth silver [let him use it]. There is no compulsion for any man.”
    EN↗ Continuator of Bar Hebraeus, tr. Budge, p. 497

    ↗ The Chronography of Bar HebraeusEN↗ Encyclopaedia IranicaEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE

  11. 24 March 1295

    6 Jumādā I 694

    contested

    Gaykhatu is put to death

    Iranica and the Turkish encyclopaedia agree to the day. Iranica adds that it was done apparently without Baydu’s knowledge or approval. The often-repeated detail that he was strangled with a bowstring is not in either entry; it rests on later secondary literature.

    ↗ Encyclopaedia IranicaEN↗ TDV İslâm AnsiklopedisiTR

  12. What it left behind

    The first block printing outside China

    The Cambridge History of Iran makes the point that the episode is worth remembering less for the money than for the method. To print the notes, Tabriz had to import the technology of block printing — and this is the earliest recorded instance of it anywhere outside China.

    “The experiment lasted little more than two months and is perhaps most noteworthy as being the first recorded instance of block printing outside of China.”
    EN↗ J. A. Boyle, The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, p. 375

    ↗ The Cambridge History of IranEN

  13. Now

    Nothing survives

    Search the American Numismatic Society’s collection for Gaykhatu and it returns twenty-seven objects. Every one of them is a coin. No chao note is known to exist anywhere. The currency that was compulsory for everyone is held today by no one.

    ↗ American Numismatic SocietyEN

EXHIBIT 02  ·  The Note

A RECONSTRUCTION

No chao survives. Everything below is a description written by someone who saw one, copied by someone who read that, and argued over since. The sheet is drawn from those descriptions — which is also why the descriptions disagree with each other in places, and why those disagreements are printed here rather than smoothed over.

reconstruction  ·  drawn from written descriptions

  1. 01

    An oblong slip

    Three independent European accounts, all working from the Persian chronicles, describe the same thing: a long rectangular slip with Chinese words written along the edge. Jahn calls it a länglicher Schein, Howorth an oblong piece of paper, d’Ohsson un morceau de papier carré long.

    “Das Papiergeld Gaiḫatu-Ḫan’s hatte die Gestalt eines länglichen Scheines, der am Rande mit einigen chinesischen Worten beschrieben war.”
    DE↗ Karl Jahn, Archiv Orientální X (1938), p. 331

    The Turkish encyclopaedia describes it instead as a rhombus. On this point it stands alone against three, and there is no object to settle it.

    ↗ Archiv OrientálníDE↗ Howorth, History of the MongolsEN↗ d’Ohsson, Histoire des MongolsFR↗ Yule & Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco PoloEN

  2. 02

    Three writing systems

    Chinese along the edge — Yule notes the characters were imitated as part of the design. At the top, on both faces, the Muslim profession of faith, which Jahn reads as a concession to the Muslim population of the empire. Beneath it, the ruler’s Tibetan name.

    “The notes were direct copies of Kúblái’s, even the Chinese characters being imitated as part of the device upon them.”
    EN↗ Henry Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. I, p. 428

    The reconstruction on this site does not reproduce the religious formula. A sacred text does not belong on a novelty. The history is told instead.

    ↗ Yule & Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco PoloEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE↗ Howorth, History of the MongolsEN↗ d’Ohsson, Histoire des MongolsFR

  3. 03

    Īrinjīn Dūrjī

    Gaykhatu’s Tibetan name, given him by Buddhist lamas: Rin-chen rDo-rje, “Jewel Diamond”. It appears on the notes and on his coins alike — which is how we know the reading is right, because the coins survive and the notes do not.

    ↗ Archiv OrientálníDE↗ Encyclopaedia IranicaEN↗ Howorth, History of the MongolsEN↗ d’Ohsson, Histoire des MongolsFR

  4. 04

    The value, in a circle

    The denomination sat inside a circle in the middle of the sheet — the same convention the Yuan notes used. The Syriac chronicle describes the range from the inside: one dinar, two, three, and so on up to ten.

    “He stamped them with a mark in red, and he wrote [on them] and showed which was for one dinar, and which for two, or three, or four, or five [dinars], and so on up to ten dinars. And he called them ‘Shāw’.”
    EN↗ Continuator of Bar Hebraeus, tr. Budge, p. 496

    The bottom of the range is not agreed. Vaṣṣāf: half a dirham. Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, via Iranica: a quarter dirham. The continuator of Bar Hebraeus: the lowest was one dinar. Mīrkhwānd and Khwāndamīr: one to ten dirhams.

    ↗ The Chronography of Bar HebraeusEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE↗ d’Ohsson, Histoire des MongolsFR↗ TDV İslâm AnsiklopedisiTR

  5. 05

    The threat printed on the money

    The sheet carried its own penalty clause. Jahn gives the wording; Yule’s English rendering says the same thing. Whoever forged or altered it would be executed together with his wife and children, and his property taken by the state.

    “Der Padišah der Welt hat im Jahre 693 (1294) dieses gesegnete Papiergeld im Reiche eingeführt. Wer dasselbe fälscht oder eine Änderung daran vornimmt, wird mit Weib und Kind hingerichtet und sein Besitz von Staatswegen konfisziert.”
    DE↗ Karl Jahn, Archiv Orientální X (1938), p. 332

    ↗ Archiv OrientálníDE↗ Yule & Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco PoloEN↗ Howorth, History of the MongolsEN↗ TDV İslâm AnsiklopedisiTR

  6. 06

    And a promise

    The same sheet that threatened to execute your family also made an economic forecast. It is the detail that makes the object feel modern: the threat and the utopia printed on the same piece of paper, in the same run.

    “That when these auspicious notes were once in circulation, poverty would vanish, provisions become cheap, and rich and poor be equal.”
    EN↗ Henry Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. I, p. 428

    ↗ Yule & Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco PoloEN↗ Howorth, History of the MongolsEN

  7. 07

    The paper is not known

    The one contemporary witness who names a material says papyrus. Jahn rejects it outright — papyrus had been out of use for three centuries — and notes that Vaṣṣāf, Rashīd al-Dīn, Mīrkhwānd and Khwāndamīr say only “paper”. You can now read both sides of that argument in the original.

    “And he made slips of paper from papyrus which could be written upon.”
    EN↗ Continuator of Bar Hebraeus, tr. Budge, p. 496

    Widely repeated as “imported Chinese mulberry paper”. That is Jahn’s inference by analogy with Chinese practice, not a statement any source makes.

    ↗ The Chronography of Bar HebraeusEN↗ Archiv OrientálníDE

02·B  ·  What can be shown

PUBLIC DOMAIN · CC0

The sheet above is a reconstruction and says so. These are not. Each one is a real object in a public collection, and each caption carries the credit line the collection asks for — including two corrections, because both of these images are routinely mislabelled.

  • The note that was copied

    The note that was copied

    A Yuan dynasty banknote. This is the type the Ilkhanid court adapted — the ruled frame, the vertical text panels, the impressed seals, and the value shown as strings of cash coins threaded on a cord.

    This is a Yuan note, not a chao. No chao survives to photograph.

    ↗ Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
  • Money Gaykhatu actually struck

    Money Gaykhatu actually struck

    Gold mithqāl of Gaykhatu, struck at Madīnat Tabrīz in 691 AH — about three years before the paper. The mint is the same city; the ruler is the same man. This is what the bazaar went back to.

    ↗ American Numismatic Society, 1998.92.2. Public Domain Mark.
  • A block for printing money

    A block for printing money

    A Yuan-era printing block for paper currency. The Tabriz operation needed one of these before it could need anything else — the notes were prepared in quantity over roughly seven weeks before the issue.

    ↗ Photograph by Gary Lee Todd, PhD. CC0.
  • The man who said no

    The man who said no

    Gaykhatu interrogating Shingtūr Noyan, from a manuscript of Rashīd al-Dīn’s Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh. Shingtūr is the one emir recorded as objecting to the scheme. The objection was dismissed on the grounds that he was fond of gold.

    ↗ Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh, Sayf al-Vahidi, Herat, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
  • The hand of the chancery

    The hand of the chancery

    A farmān of Gaykhatu in taʿlīq script, 105 × 34 cm. Not the chao decree, but the same office issuing the same kind of order in the same reign.

    Dated June 1292 — two years before the paper money. It is not the chao edict.

    ↗ Art and History Collection, LTS1995.2.9, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

EXHIBIT 03  ·  The Collapse

  1. AUTUMN 1294

    Printed

    The treasury is empty. On the advice of Bolad Chingsang, the Yuan court’s resident envoy, the Tabriz mint copies Chinese paper money — a single sheet carrying Chinese along its edge, Arabic at the top, and the ruler’s Tibetan name beneath. What the paper itself was made of, the sources do not agree on.

  2. THE EDICT

    Decreed

    Refusing the note as a means of exchange is made punishable by death; so is holding silver and not surrendering it. This is the mechanism, with the euphemism removed: nothing stands behind the paper except the order to take it.

  3. WITHIN DAYS

    Refused

    Prices rise more than tenfold. Within two or three days much of the population has left and traffic in the bazaars has stopped. The note is accepted for about a week, Jahn writes, out of fear of the sword — and finds no currency in trade at all.

  4. WEEKS, THEN MONTHS

    Withdrawn

    The government authorises coin for food, then rescinds the edict altogether. On 24 March 1295 the ruler who signed it is put to death. Not one chao note is known to survive.

EXHIBIT 04  ·  The Evidence

OPEN THEM YOURSELF

Two contemporary chronicles in standard translation, the reference works of record, the 1938 monograph in its original German, and a coin catalogue that proves a negative. Every one of them is free to read — no paywalls, no logins, no blog posts, no screenshots of screenshots.

17 sources

  • EN12
  • TR3
  • DE1
  • FR1

all open access

  • chronicleENThe Chronography of Bar HebraeusContinuator of Bar Hebraeus, tr. E. A. Wallis Budge, Oxford University Press 1932, vol. I, pp. 496–497The contemporary Syriac witness, and the text every later account is quoting when it says the disruption lasted two months. Budge’s note at p. 475 establishes that everything after 1286 is the work of a continuator, probably Bar Hebraeus’s brother — which is why the attribution reads the way it does.↗ archive.org↗ searchable plain textEN
  • chronicleENRashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkhtr. W. M. Thackston, Harvard University 1998, p. 584The Persian court history, written by a man who served the same dynasty a generation later, in the standard English translation. It supplies the dates, the officials sent to Tabriz, and the exchange between Shiktür Noyan and Ṣadr al-Dīn in direct speech.↗ archive.org
  • academicDEArchiv OrientálníKarl Jahn, “Das iranische Papiergeld”, X (1938), pp. 308–340The monograph on the episode, working directly from Rashīd al-Dīn, Vaṣṣāf, Mīrkhwānd and Khwāndamīr, and the study that argues against the papyrus claim. Free full text in the German original; the Turkish translation is linked alongside it.↗ archive.org↗ Turkish translation, Belleten VI/23–24 (1942)TR
  • encyclopaediaENEncyclopaedia IranicaPeter Jackson, “ČĀV”, vol. V, fasc. 1, pp. 96–97The standard reference entry. Gives the circulation date, the tenfold price rise, and the attribution of the two-month figure to the continuator of Bar Hebraeus.↗ iranicaonline.org
  • encyclopaediaENEncyclopaedia Iranica“GAYḴĀTŪ KHAN”Gives the date of execution and the Tibetan name that appears on both the notes and the coins.↗ iranicaonline.org
  • encyclopaediaENEncyclopaedia Iranica“BOLOD Čīngsāng”On the Yuan envoy who described the Chinese system to the Ilkhanid court.↗ iranicaonline.org
  • referenceENThe Cambridge History of IranJ. A. Boyle, “Dynastic and Political History of the Il-Khāns”, vol. 5, pp. 374–375The standard English survey of the period. Sets out the whole sequence in one paragraph, and makes the observation that the chao is the first recorded instance of block printing outside China.↗ archive.org
  • referenceENHoworth, History of the MongolsPart III: The Mongols of Persia, Longmans 1888, pp. 370–371A Victorian compilation, superseded on interpretation but still the fullest English description of the note itself — shape, inscriptions, and the wording of the penalty clause.↗ archive.org
  • referenceFRd’Ohsson, Histoire des MongolsVol. IV, La Haye & Amsterdam 1834, pp. 102–104The nineteenth-century study that put the Persian sources into a European language first. Howorth is largely following it.↗ archive.org
  • referenceENYule & Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo3rd ed., London 1903, vol. I, p. 428, editorial noteYule’s note on imitations of Chinese paper currency gives the text printed on the Tabriz note, including the promise that once it circulated, poverty would vanish.↗ archive.org
  • encyclopaediaTRTDV İslâm AnsiklopedisiTahsin Yazıcı, “ÇAV”, vol. 8, p. 235 (1993)The Turkish reference entry, and the outlier on the shape of the note. Its printed date “Zilkade 693 (October 1293)” is an error for 1294.↗ islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • encyclopaediaTRTDV İslâm AnsiklopedisiAbdülkadir Yuvalı, “GEYHATU HAN”, vol. 14, pp. 44–45 (1996)Agrees with Iranica on both the flight and the execution date, to the day.↗ islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • academicTRModern Türklük Araştırmaları DergisiA. Melek Özyetgin, vol. 1 no. 1 (2004), pp. 90–105, Ankara UniversityOn the word çav itself and its use in Uyghur civil documents. Free PDF, no paywall, direct link.↗ mtad.humanity.ankara.edu.tr
  • academicENEconomic History ReviewGuan, Palma & Wu, “The Rise and Fall of Paper Money in Yuan China, 1260–1368”On the currency the Ilkhanid court was copying: the Yuan was the first regime to run paper as the sole legal tender. Free working-paper PDF.↗ hummedia.manchester.ac.uk
  • catalogueENNational Museum of ChinaZhongtong Yuanbao Jiaochao, Yuan dynasty, 26.4 × 21.1 cmA surviving example of the note type the Tabriz mint copied, with its measurements, in the collection of the country that issued it.↗ en.chnmuseum.cn
  • catalogueENAmerican Numismatic SocietyCollection search, “Gaykhatu” — 27 recordsTwenty-seven objects from Gaykhatu’s reign sit in one of the world’s major numismatic collections, and every one of them is a coin. Running the search and finding no note is the simplest way to see that none survives. (Numista’s Ilkhanate catalogue gives the same answer — 98 items, all coins — but sits behind a bot challenge, so it is not linked here.)↗ numismatics.org
  • referenceENBritannica“The Il-Khans in Iran”General-reference account of the reign and the paper-money attempt.↗ britannica.com

Claims that failed this check are not on this page. They are written down, with the reason, in the research file.

EXHIBIT 05  ·  The Echo

STRUCTURE, NOT PROPHECY

The parallels below are structural. Nothing here predicts anything, and a seven-hundred-year-old failure is not a forecast. It is a well-documented instance of a mechanism that is still in use.

  • 1294

    Refusal was a capital offence.

    NOW

    Legal tender is still defined as the thing you may not refuse.

    The 1294 proclamation is the mechanism in its purest form, with the euphemism stripped out. Every currency since has needed some version of it.

  • 1294

    The note promised nothing and was redeemable for nothing.

    NOW

    A token is a claim on nothing unless something makes it one.

    Chao was not a receipt for metal held elsewhere. Neither is most of what trades today. The difference is that Tabriz was honest about the mechanism, because it had to print the threat on the paper.

  • 1294

    It promised that poverty would vanish and rich and poor be equal.

    NOW

    The pitch has not changed in seven hundred years.

    That sentence was printed on the note itself, next to the clause about executing your family. Both were part of the same design.

  • 1294

    Prices rose more than tenfold in days.

    NOW

    Confidence does not decay. It stops.

    The interesting number is not the tenfold rise but how fast it happened. Two or three days from issue to an empty bazaar.

  • 1294

    The state could compel issue but not acceptance.

    NOW

    Distribution is not adoption.

    Taken from motives of fear, and never circulating in trade, is a precise description of a token with holders and no market.

  • 1294

    Nothing of it survives.

    NOW

    The record outlived the money.

    Not one note is known to exist. What survives is the paperwork about it — which is, in the end, the only asset this project has too.

EXHIBIT 06  ·  The Mint

PRINT YOUR OWN

The Tabriz mint printed notes the bazaar would not take, and printing more did not help. This one runs in your browser and prints as many as you like. Same principle, better redemption terms.

Presets

Exports at 2048px. The sheet is a reconstruction, not a photograph of a surviving note — the label is printed on it so it cannot be passed off as one.

EXHIBIT 07  ·  $CHAO

SOLANA · PUMP.FUN

Ticker
$CHAO
Chain
Solana
Launchpad
pump.fun
Supply
1,000,000,000
Tax
None
Contract

Not minted. There is no contract address yet, so any address circulating right now is fake. When the token exists, the address will appear here and be posted from our own accounts at the same moment.

Not live yet
  1. 01

    Get a Solana wallet

    Phantom or Solflare. Fund it with SOL from an exchange. Nothing on this site can do that for you.

  2. 02

    Check the address yourself

    Copy the contract address below and compare it against the one linked from our own accounts. Impersonators are the norm, not the exception.

  3. 03

    Swap on pump.fun

    Paste the address, set an amount you are willing to lose entirely, and set your slippage deliberately rather than accepting the default.

The research file this project is built on says the quiet part out loud: even a good story does not change the base rate. Most tokens launched in this market go to zero. A verifiable story improves the odds of being noticed. It does not improve the odds of being right.

EXHIBIT 08  ·  The Dossier

METHOD & DISCLOSURE

How this page was checked

Eight independent researchers worked separate seams — the primary chronicles, the numismatic record, the Turkish-language sources, image rights, and the state of the ticker across every exchange listing we could query.

Each of them was then handed to a second reader whose only instruction was to open every link and try to break the claim. That pass killed several good lines, including the one about the bowstring and the one about imported mulberry paper.

What survived is on this page. What did not survive is written down in the research file under the heading it deserves, which is do not use.

Questions

Is the note on this site a real chao?
No, and none exists. No specimen of the 1294 Tabriz chao is known to survive anywhere — the American Numismatic Society holds twenty-seven objects from this reign and every one of them is a coin. The sheet here is drawn from code, built out of the elements the chroniclers describe, and labelled a reconstruction wherever it appears. Anyone showing you a photograph of “a real chao” is showing you something else.
Why does the reconstruction leave out the religious text?
The sources say the profession of faith was printed at the top of the note. Reproducing a sacred formula on a novelty object is a bad idea regardless of how the history reads, so the reconstruction omits it and the history section states it instead.
Did it really last eight weeks?
That number is a compression and this site does not use it. What the record supports: the bazaars stopped within two or three days; the note was accepted for about a week out of fear of the sword; the continuator of Bar Hebraeus puts the period of riot and confusion that followed at two months; the Turkish encyclopaedia says shopkeepers shut for three days, and elsewhere gives “a few months” and “four months”. The honest answer is that the sources disagree.
Was Gaykhatu strangled with a bowstring?
Possibly, but not according to the two reference works this site relies on. Encyclopaedia Iranica and the TDV encyclopaedia agree he was put to death on 24 March 1295 and neither mentions a bowstring. The detail comes from later secondary literature. It is a good line and it is not evidence, so it stays off the page.
What does $CHAO entitle me to?
Nothing. There is no treasury, no revenue, no governance, no redemption and no promise. It is a token attached to a piece of history that happens to be unusually well documented. The documentation is real; the token is a token.
Why should I believe any of this?
You should not. Open the sources. Every claim on this site links to an institutional reference work or a free full-text academic article, and the ones that failed verification are listed in the research file rather than quietly deleted.