Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad Shah II ruled Gujarat for less than a decade before dying in 1451, leaving a sultanate that would reach its political peak only under his successors. The Gujarat Sultanate struck copper tankas in fractional denominations primarily to facilitate low-value market transactions at a time when the region's textile and spice trades were generating enormous wealth at the wholesale level — the copper coinage existed precisely because the silver did not reach the hands doing the smallest transactions.
Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad Shah II ruled Gujarat for less than a decade before dying in 1451, leaving a sultanate that would reach its political peak only under his successors. The Gujarat Sultanate struck copper tankas in fractional denominations primarily to facilitate low-value market transactions at a time when the region's textile and spice trades were generating enormous wealth at the wholesale level — the copper coinage existed precisely because the silver did not reach the hands doing the smallest transactions.