1/2 Pice - Shah Alam II

Shah Alam II had been effectively blind and a pensioner of the Marathas, then the British, for decades by the time this coin was struck in his name. The Bengal Presidency continued issuing currency under his titular authority well after the Mughal emperor had lost any practical power — a bureaucratic inertia that persisted even past his death in 1806. This coin was minted a full decade after he died, his name retained on the coinage purely for continuity and commercial familiarity across Bengali markets.