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1/8 Anna - Shah Alam II
| Issuer | Bengal Presidency |
|---|---|
| Year | 1781 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Round |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse script | Arabic |
| Reverse lettering | سنه ٢٢ جلوس (Translation: In the 22nd year of his reign.) |
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| Additional information |
Shah Alam II was, by 1781, a ruler in name only — blinded and humiliated by the Afghan chief Ghulam Qadir in 1788, and already by the early 1780s entirely dependent on British protection following his defeat at Buxar in 1764. The Bengal Presidency continued striking coins in his name for decades after any real Mughal authority had collapsed, a bureaucratic fiction that suited the East India Company's need to maintain legitimacy with local populations still accustomed to Mughal monetary nomenclature.
The Pr#197 reference places this squarely in Pridmore's cataloguing of EIC copper, where these fractional annas are noted for considerable die variability in the positioning of the Persian script.