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1 Legal Dirham - Muhammad Tughluq
| Issuer | Delhi Sultanate |
|---|---|
| Year | 1325-1351 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Hammered brass flan bearing a bold multi-line Arabic legend filling the entire field, executed in a characteristic Tughluq-era calligraphic style. The inscription, arranged in three or four horizontal registers, references the sultan's titles and royal epithets. A dotted inner border or pellet ornaments punctuate the lower register. The surfaces are flat and slightly irregular, consistent with hand-struck production, and the die engraving is deeply cut with pronounced relief against a plain ground. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse script | Arabic |
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| Additional information |
Muhammad bin Tughluq's brass dirham issues belong to one of the most audacious — and catastrophically failed — monetary experiments in medieval history. Facing a chronic silver shortage and needing to fund an impossibly ambitious imperial program, the sultan attempted to introduce token coinage in base metal that would circulate at the value of silver. The public response was immediate counterfeiting on a massive scale; contemporary chronicler Ibn Battuta, who served at the Delhi court, described the courtyards of houses filling with forged coins as merchants refused the new currency wholesale.
The experiment was abandoned and the brass issues were officially redeemable at the treasury for silver — a reversal that nearly bankrupted the sultanate.