After the battle of Pānīpat, in 1526, Z̤ahīru-d-dīn Bābur’s rule in Hindustān, until his death in 1530, was in reality nothing more than a military occupation, and Humāyūn’s position during the first ten years of his reign was even more unstable. The silver shāhruḵẖ̱īs, or dirhams, of Bābur and Humāyūn, which follow in every respect the Central Asian coinage of the Timurid princes, were obviously struck only as occasion warranted, chiefly at Āgra, Lāhor (Pl. X, 1), Dehlī and Kābul. The interesting camp mint Urdū first appears on a coin of Bābur, an eloquent testimony to the nature of his sovereignty. On the obverse of these coins is the Kalima, enclosed in areas of various shapes with the names of the four orthodox Khalifs or Companions and their attributes[59] in the margins; on the reverse the king’s name, also in an area, in the margins various titles, together with the mint and generally the date. Humāyūn’s gold are tiny mintless pieces, also of Timurid fabric (Pl. X, 2); a very few of these and some silver dirhams are known of Akbar’s first three years. Bābur and Humāyūn’s copper coins are anonymous, and were minted chiefly at Āgra, Dehlī, Lāhor and Jaunpūr.

Note.—The mint marks in Fig. 9 occur on coins of the following: (1) Humāyūn, Āgra, etc. (2) Shāh ’Ālam II, Shāhjahānābād. (3) Aurangzeb, Multān. (4) East India Company, copied from Mug̱ẖal coins. (5) Nawābs of Awadh, Muḥammadābād-Banāras. (6) The Kitār—“dagger,” Shāh ’Ālam II, Narwar, etc. (7) Ankūs—“Elephant-goad”—Marāṭhā coins.

The Afg̱ẖān Sher Shāh Sūrī, who after the expulsion of Humāyūn in 1540 (A.H. 947), controlled the destinies of Hindustān for five years, was a ruler of great constructive and administrative ability, and the reform of the coinage, though completed by Akbar, was in a great measure due to his genius. His innovations lay chiefly in two directions: first, the introduction of a new standard of 178 grains for silver, and one of about 330 grains for copper, with its half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth parts. These two new coins were subsequently known as the rupee and the dām. The second innovation was a large increase in the number of the mints: at least twenty-three mint names appear on the Sūrī coins. The object of this extension, probably suggested to Sher Shāh during his residence in Bihār by the Bengal coinage, was no doubt to provide an ocular proof of sovereignty to his subjects in the most distant provinces of his dominions; but the system needed a firm and resolute hand at the centre of government.

Genuine gold coins of the Sūrī kings are exceedingly rare. The rupees are fine broad pieces (Pl. X, 3); the obverse follows the style of Humāyūn’s silver; the reverse bears the Sultan’s name in a square or circular area, along with the date and the legend, “May God perpetuate his kingdom,” and below the area the Sultan’s name in Hindī, often very faulty.[60] In the margin are inscribed the special titles of the Sultan, and sometimes the mint. On a large number of both silver and copper coins no mint name occurs; some of these seem to be really mintless, the dies of others were too large for the coin discs. On a very common mintless silver type of Islām Shāh (1545-53) and Muḥammad ’Ādil Shāh, the Arabic figures 477 occur in the margin: the significance of these is unknown. A few silver coins of Sher Shāh and Islām Shāh are square; half-rupees are extremely scarce; a one-sixteenth piece is also known.

The majority of copper coins bear on the obverse the inscription, “In the time of the commander of the faithful, the protector of the religion of the Requiter”; on the reverse appear the Sultan’s name and titles and the mint (Pl. X, 4). These inscriptions are sometimes contained within square areas.

During the years 1552-56 two nephews and a cousin of Sher Shāh, Muḥammad ’Ādil, Sikandar and Ibrāhīm, contested the throne and struck both copper and silver. Coins of the two last are very rare (Pl. X, 5).

The few coins of Humāyūn’s short second reign of six months which have survived show that he had adopted both the new silver and copper standards of the Sūrīs, though he also coined dirhams. With Akbar’s accession, in 1556 (A.H. 963), begins the Mug̱ẖal coinage proper. The special value placed by Muhammadan sovereigns on the privilege of coining has already been noticed; Muḥammad bin Tug̱ẖlaq used his money as a means of imposing decrees upon his subjects; in a more refined way Akbar used the coinage to propagate his new “Divine” faith; and both he and the cultured Jahāngīr detected in it a ready medium for the expression of their artistic tastes. The importance attached to the currency by the Mug̱ẖal emperors is further revealed in the full accounts given by Akbar’s minister, Abū-l-faẓl, in the Āīn-i-Akbarī, and by Jahāngīr in his memoirs, the Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī, and by the number of references to the subject by historians throughout the whole period. From these and from a study of the coins themselves scholars have collected a mass of materials, from which it is now possible to give a fairly comprehensive account of the Mug̱ẖal coinage. Abū-l-faẓl and Jahāngīr mention a large number of gold and silver coins, varying from 2,000 tolahs[61] to a few grains in weight. Gigantic pieces are also mentioned by Manucci, Hawkins and others; and Manucci says that they were not current, but that the king (Shāh Jahān) “gave them as presents to the ladies.” They were also at times presented to ambassadors, and appear, indeed, to have been merely used as a convenient form in which to store treasure. Naturally very few of these pieces have survived, but a silver coin of Aurangzeb is reported to be in Dresden, which weighs five and a half English pounds, and there is a cast of a 200-muhar piece of Shāh Jahān in the British Museum. In the British Museum also are two five-muhar pieces, one of Akbar and one of Jahāngīr, both struck in the Āgra mint. A few double rupees of later emperors, and a ten-rupee piece of Shāh ’Ālam II of Sūrat mint are also known. The standard gold coin of the Mug̱ẖals was the muhar, of about 170 to 175 grains, the equivalent of nine rupees in Abū-l-faẓl’s time. With the exception of a few of Akbar’s square issues, which are slightly heavier, and Jahāngīr’s experiment during his first five years, when it was raised first by one-fifth to 204 grains, and then by one-fourth to 212·5 grains, the muhar maintains a wonderful consistency of weight and purity to the end of the dynasty. Half and quarter muhars are known of several emperors, and a very few smaller pieces.

The rupee, adopted from Sher Shāh’s currency, is the most famous of all Mug̱ẖal coins. The name occurs only once, on a rupee of Āgra minted in Akbar’s forty-seventh year.[62] This, too, maintained its standard of weight, 178 grains, practically unimpaired, although during the reigns of the later emperors some rupees minted by their officers are deficient in purity. The “heavy” rupees of Jahāngīr’s early years exceed the normal weight, like the muhars, first by one-fifth and then by one-fourth; and a few slightly heavier than the normal standard were also minted by Shāh ’Ālam Bahādur and Farruḵẖ̱siyar in Bihār and Bengal. Halves, quarters, eighths and sixteenths were also struck. In Sūrat the half rupee appears to have been in special demand, and in Akbar’s reign the half rupee was also the principal coin issuing from Kābul.

In addition to the regular gold and silver currency, special small pieces were occasionally struck for largesse; the commonest of these is the nis̤ār, struck in silver by Jahāngīr, Shāh Jahān, Aurangzeb, Jahāndār and Farruḵẖ̱siyar. Gold nis̤ārs are very scarce (Pl. XI, 8). Jahāngīr also issued similar pieces, which he called Nūr afshān, “Light scattering,” and Ḵẖ̱air qabūl, “May these alms be accepted” (Pl. X, 12). In 1679 Aurangzeb reimposed the jizyā, or poll-tax, on infidels, and, in order to facilitate payment in the orthodox manner, struck the dirham shar’ī, “legal dirham,” usually square in shape, in a number of mints (Pl. XI, 11). Farruḵẖ̱siyar again issued these dirhams, when he re-instituted the poll-tax in the sixth year of his reign. The Mug̱ẖal copper coinage is based on Sher Shāh’s dām of 320 to 330 grains, which, with its half, quarter and eighth, continued to be struck until the fifth year of Aurangzeb, 1663 (A.H. 1073). The name dām occurs only once on a half dām of Akbar of Srīnagar mint. The usual term employed is Fulūs, “copper money,” or Sikkah fulūs, “stamped copper money.” The names niṣfī (half dām), damrā (= quarter dām), damrī (= one eighth of a dām) also appear on Akbar’s copper. Jahāngīr inscribes the word rawānī on some of his full and half dāms, and rā’īj on his smaller pieces, both meaning simply “current.”

Between the forty-fifth and fiftieth years of Akbar’s reign were issued, from eight mints, the full tankah of 644 grains weight, with its half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth parts, though the large full tankahs are known only from Āgra, Dehlī (Pl. X, 10), Aḥmadābād and Bairāt. About the same time Akbar introduced the decimal standard, with his series of four, two and one tānkī pieces, struck at Aḥmadābād, Āgra, Kābul and Lāhor; ten tānkīs being equal to one full tankah.

After the fifth year of Aurangzeb, owing to a rise in the price of copper, the weight of the dām or fulūs was diminished to 220 grains, and this became the accepted standard for southern mints. A few coins of the heavier weight were struck subsequently by Aurangzeb, Shāh ’Ālam Bahādur and Farruḵẖ̱siyar. The copper coinage of later emperors until Shāh ’Ālam II’s reign is not plentiful.

The early gold and silver coins of Akbar bear the same inscriptions, though there is some variation in their arrangement. Following Bābur’s and the Sūrī coinage, the Kalima and Companions’ names appear on the obverse, and on the reverse at the beginning of the reign the following inscription, “Jalālu-d-dīn Muḥammad Akbar, Emperor, champion of the Faith, the mighty Sultan, the illustrious Emperor, may God most High perpetuate the kingdom and the sovereignty.” Portions of this are dropped later on (Pl. X, 7). Squares, circles, lozenges and other geometrical figures are employed to contain the more important parts of the legend, and the mint name always, and the date generally, appear on the reverse. About the year A.H. 985 the shape of the coins was changed from round to square, but the same inscriptions were retained.

In the year 1579 (A.H. 987) Akbar promulgated his Infallibility Decree, and in the same year appear quarter rupees from the Fatḥpūr, Lāhor, and Aḥmadābād mints, with a new inscription, Allāhu Akbar, upon the obverse. From the thirty-second year an expanded form of this, Allāhu Akbar jalla jalālahu, “God is great, eminent is His glory,” appears on a mintless series of square silver coins (Pl. X, 11); and from the thirty-sixth year it is used regularly on the square issues of the chief mints; later on there is a reversion to the round form. These Ilāhī coins are all dated in Akbar’s new regnal era,[63] and also bear the names of the Persian solar months. The custom of issuing coins monthly continues with a few breaks in Jahāngīr’s reign until the early years of Shāh Jahān. The round Ilāhī coins, especially those of Āgra, Patna and Lāhor, display considerable artistic merit: certain issues of Āgra of the fiftieth year (Pl. X, 8) are probably the finest of the whole Mug̱ẖal series. Among the many remarkable coins struck by Akbar may be mentioned the muhar, shaped like a double Mihrāb, which appeared from the Āgra mint in A.H. 981 (Pl. X, 6); the Ilāhī muhar of the fiftieth year, from the same mint, engraved with the figure of a duck (Pl. X, 9); the beautiful “hawk” muhar, struck at Asīrgarh in commemoration of its conquest in the forty-fifth year; and the mintless half-muhar, bearing the figures of Sītā and Rāma. Specimens of all these are in the British Museum. Akbar also initiated the practice of inscribing verse-couplets on the coinage, into which was worked the emperor’s name or the mint, or both. These were used by him for only three mints, but with Jahāngīr the practice became general, and forty-seven different couplets of his reign have been recorded (cf. Key to Pl. XI, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Jahāngīr’s gold and silver coins in their endless variety are the most ornate of all Mug̱ẖal coins. Starting with a Kalima obverse, and his name and titles on the reverse (Pl. X, 1), he soon adopted a couplet legend; sometimes the couplet is peculiar to a single mint, sometimes it serves a group of mints. During the fifth and sixth years at Āgra (Pl. XI, 4) and Lāhor the couplets were for a short time changed every month. In the latter year followed a new type, with the emperor’s name on the obverse, and the month, date and mint name on the reverse; this remains till the end of the reign on the coins of some mints, but at Āgra, Lāhor, Qandahār and one or two others there is a return to the couplet inscription. For varying periods between the years A.H. 1033 and 1037 the name of the Empress Nūr Jahān is associated in a couplet with that of Jahāngīr on the issues of Āgra, Aḥmadābād, Akbarnagar, Ilahābād, Patna, Sūrat (Pl. XI, 5) and Lāhor.

Jahāngīr seemed to find unceasing zest in novelty: from the sixth to the thirteenth year of his reign the rupees of Āgra were minted in the square and round shape in alternate months. In the thirteenth year appeared the famous Zodiac coins, on which pictorial representations of the signs of the zodiac were substituted for the names of the months on the reverse; this type was retained on the Āgra muhars (Pl. XI, 2) till the seventeenth year. The Zodiac rupees of Aḥmadābād lasted only for five months during the thirteenth year, while single gold and silver coins of this type are known of Lāhor, Fatḥpūr, Ajmer, Urdū and Kashmīr, of various years up to A.H. 1036. The so-called Bacchanalian and portrait muhars have been recently shown to be insignia presented by Jahāngīr to his courtiers.[64] Some of these are mintless, others were struck at Ajmer. On the obverse of the latter the emperor appears seated cross-legged with a wine-cup in his hand (Pl. XI, 3). The most remarkable of the former, struck in the first year of the reign, bears a full-faced portrait of Akbar on the obverse along with the inscription Allāhu Akbar, while a representation of the sun covers the whole of the reverse.[65]

The beauty and rarity of the couplet rupees of Ajmer, Urdū dar rāh-i-Dakan, “The camp on the road to the Deccan” and Mandū, as well as a muhar from the last mint, all struck between the ninth and eleventh years, entitle them to special mention.

Few of Shāh Jahān’s coins (A.H. 1037-1068) are of any artistic merit. The earliest form of his gold and silver has the Kalima and mint name on the obverse, and the emperor’s name and titles on the reverse (Pl. XI, 7). From the second to the fifth year solar months[66] were inscribed. From the fifth year to the end of the reign, except at the Tatta mint, where the earlier style was retained, Shāh Jahān employed a type, endless in its varieties, in which squares, circles, lozenges form borders enclosing the Kalima on the obverse and the king’s name on the reverse, while the names of the companions and their epithets are restored and appear in the obverse margins. The square border form of this type was also employed by Aurangzeb’s rivals, Murād Baḵẖ̱sh and Shāh Shujā’ (Pl. XI, 10); and Aurangzeb uses square areas to contain the inscriptions on his earlier rupees of Akbarābād (Āgra) and Jūnagarh, and for a few coins of three other mints.

The coins of Aurangzeb (A.H. 1068-1119) and his successors are, with a very few exceptions, monotonous in the extreme. On the obverse there is either a couplet containing the king’s name, or this inscription: “The blessed coin of ...,” followed by the name of the particular king. On the reverse appears, with very occasional variations, the following: “Struck at (the mint name), in the year (the regnal year) of the accession associated with prosperity.” The Hijrī date is placed on the obverse (Pl. XI, 9). Pretentious personal titles are of infrequent occurrence on Mug̱ẖal coins. Nevertheless the pretenders, Murād Baḵẖ̱sh and Shāh Shujā’, style themselves “The Second Alexander.” Shāh Jahān I, in imitation of his ancestor Tīmūr, who adopted the title “Lord of the fortunate conjunction” (i.e. of the planets), called himself “The Second Lord of the fortunate conjunction” (Ṣāḥib-i-qirān s̤āni), and eight later emperors followed his example. Jahāngīr used his princely name, Salīm, on his earliest coins from the Aḥmadābād mint (Pl. XI, 6) and on a half rupee of Kābul. On a unique rupee of Lāhor of Shāh Jahān I’s first year occurs the name Ḵẖ̱urram, while Shāh ’Ālam Bahādur placed his pre-regnal name, Mu’az̤z̤am, on coins of his first year of Tatta and Murshidābād.

Coins of special interest and rarity are those struck by pretenders, particularly the rupees of Dāwar Baḵẖ̱sh of Lāhor, A.H. 1037; the coins of Shāh Shujā’, 1068, of Bīdār Baḵẖ̱t, 1202-1203; and the rupee of Jahāngīrnagar, struck by ’Az̤īmu-sh-shān in 1124. Commemorative coins of the later emperors are exceedingly scarce, but the entry of Lord Lake into Dehlī, in 1803, was marked on Shāh ’Ālam II’s gold and silver coinage of the forty-seventh year by enclosing the obverse and reverse inscriptions within a wreath of roses, shamrocks and thistles (Pl. XII, 1).

The fabric of the copper coins is, in general, rude. With the exception of the tankah and tānkī issues, Akbar’s copper is anonymous; his Ilāhī copper, like the silver and gold, was dated in the new era and issued monthly. Some of Jahāngīr’s rawānīs, especially those from the Ajmer mint, have pretensions to artistic merit. His copper issues, and those of succeeding kings, with the exception of a few of Aurangzeb’s, have the king’s name and Hijrī date on the obverse, and the mint and regnal year on the reverse.

The Hijrī era was used by all emperors and usually the regnal year is inscribed as well. For his later coins, as has been seen, Akbar employed his own Divine era, Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān I each used similar eras, but as they place the Hijrī year along with the solar months on the coins the calculation of the dates is somewhat confusing.

From the time of Humāyūn onwards there appear on the coinage certain marks, sometimes called mint marks, but perhaps more properly designated ornaments (Fig. 9). The purpose of these on the earlier issues is uncertain, later on they sometimes marked a change of mint-masters; others appear to have been really distinctive mint marks, such as that which appears on Shāh ’Ālam II’s Shāhjahānābād coins (Fig. 9, 2).

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Mug̱ẖal coinage is the diversity of mints. Akbar’s known mints number seventy-six. Copper was struck in fifty-nine of these, the largest number recorded for any emperor, while silver is known from thirty-nine. Aurangzeb’s conquests in the Deccan raised the silver mints to seventy, whereas copper mints sank to twenty-four. For the remaining emperors mints for silver average about fifty until Shāh ’Ālam II’s time, when they rose to eighty; most of these, however, were not under the imperial control. The puppet emperors, Akbar II and Bahādur Shāh, were permitted by the East India Company to strike coins only in their prison capital, Shāhjahānābād (Dehlī). Altogether over two hundred mints are known, but the greater number of these were worked only occasionally; Āgra, Dehlī, Lāhor and Aḥmadābād alone struck coin continuously throughout the Mug̱ẖal period. To these may be added Sūrat, Ilahābād, Jahāngīrnagar and Akbarnagar from Jahāngīr’s reign, Multān from the reign of Shāh Jahān I, and Itāwah and Barelī from the time of Aurangzeb. The practice of giving mint towns honorific titles, in vogue with the early Muhammadan Sultans, was continued by the Mug̱ẖals. Thus Dehlī became, on being selected as the capital of the empire by Shāh Jahān I, in A.H. 1048, Shāhjahānābād. In the second year of the same reign Āgra became Akbarābād. Epithets were also frequently attached to mint names. Dāru-l-ḵẖ̱ilāfat, “Seat of the Khalifate,” i.e. “Chief City,” is applied to twelve mints besides Āgra. Dāru-s-salt̤anat is the usual epithet of Lāhor. After A.H. 1100 Aurangzeb changed the name of Aurangābād to Ḵẖ̱ujista Bunyād, “The fortunate foundation,” the only example of a Mug̱ẖal mint called solely by an honorific epithet.

The great system of coinage illustrated by the Mug̱ẖals, operating over such wide territories, needed, as has been already remarked, a master hand to control it. With the dissensions which set in between rival claimants to the empire on the death of Aurangzeb, the controlling power was weakened. The diminished resources of his treasury compelled the emperor, Farruḵẖ̱siyar (1713-19), to adopt the fatal policy of farming out the mints. This gave the coup de grâce to the system, and henceforward, as will be related in the next chapter, we find independent, and semi-independent chiefs and states striking coins of their own, but always with the nominal consent of the Dehlī emperor, and almost invariably in his name. Not until the nineteenth century was the Mug̱ẖal style and superscription generally discarded.

Such was the coinage of the “Great Mogul.” Considering it as the output of a single dynasty, which maintained the high standard and purity of its gold and silver for three hundred years, considering also its variety, the number of its mints, the artistic merit of some of its series, the influence it exerted on contemporary and subsequent coinages, and the importance of its standard coin—the rupee—in the commerce of to-day, the Mug̱ẖal currency surely deserves to rank as one of the great coinages of the world.