1/2 Tanka - Nasir Al-Din Mahmud Shah

Nasir al-Din Mahmud Shah ruled Jaunpur at the sultanate's political peak, when it controlled a broad swath of the central Gangetic plain and maintained a sustained rivalry with the Delhi Sultanate under the Sayyid and then Lodi dynasties. The billon coinage of this reign reflects chronic silver shortages that plagued northern Indian sultanates through the mid-fifteenth century — fractional denominations in debased alloy were a fiscal necessity, not a stylistic choice.

Jaunpur was extinguished in 1479 when Bahlul Lodi finally crushed the sultanate after decades of intermittent warfare. Coins from this series survived poorly in circulation, the billon alloy being particularly susceptible to corrosion in the subcontinent's soil conditions.