1 Mithqal - Muhammad Khudabanda Safavi type B, Qazwin mint

Muhammad Khudabanda — whose name means "servant of God" — was nearly blind when he was placed on the Safavid throne in 1578, passed over for years precisely because of his poor eyesight. His reign coincided with simultaneous Ottoman pressure from the west and Uzbek raids from the northeast, a military crisis that drained the treasury and made consistent, high-quality gold coinage increasingly difficult to sustain. Qazwin had served as the Safavid capital since Shah Tahmasp moved the court there from Tabriz in 1555, a decision driven entirely by vulnerability to Ottoman cannon.

The Type B designation distinguishes this issue from earlier die work of the same reign on technical grounds recorded in Album's corpus.