1/2 Rupee - Shah Alam II Surat

Shah Alam II had been functionally blind and a pensioner of the Marathas, then the British, for decades by the time these Surat-mint pieces were struck — his name on the coin a legal fiction maintained because Company coinage required a Mughal imperial sanction, however hollow. The practice of striking in the emperor's name continued well past any meaningful Mughal authority, and persisted at Surat specifically because the city's merchant community demanded familiar monetary forms for trade confidence.

Shah Alam died in 1806, the opening year of this issue's range. Coins bearing his name continued to be struck after his death under his successor Akbar II, the regnal fiction simply carrying forward unchanged.