1/2 Mithqal - Tahmasb I Safavi Shahabad Mint

Tahmasb I ruled the Safavid Empire for over half a century — the longest reign of any Safavid shah — yet gold coinage from his later years remains genuinely scarce. By the early 1570s his court had shifted focus toward the eastern frontier following decades of grinding Ottoman conflict, and provincial mints like Shahabad operated intermittently, producing small runs that rarely entered wide circulation. The Shahabad mint itself is poorly documented in the secondary literature, which partly explains Album's "N" prefix designation indicating an unconfirmed or provisional attribution.