1 Fals - 'Ali b. Yusuf

The Sultanate of Mogadishu operated as a prosperous Indian Ocean trading state well before Portuguese disruption of East African coastal commerce in the early sixteenth century. Its bronze fals coinage served local market exchange while gold and silver flowed through the port in foreign denominations. 'Ali b. Yusuf is among the later attested sultans of the dynasty, and surviving fals attributable to his reign are genuinely scarce — the low weight and small module of these pieces made them prone to loss and corrosion in the coastal humidity of the Benadir littoral.