Shah Alam II was nominally Mughal emperor, but by 1788 had been effectively blind, politically captive, and militarily dependent on Maratha protection following his brutal blinding at the hands of Ghulam Qadir in that same year. The Bengal Presidency continued issuing mohurs in his name well past any meaningful Mughal authority — a legal fiction maintained because Company coinage required the nominal sanction of a Mughal emperor to circulate without controversy in Indian markets.
KM#113 belongs to a long series of "frozen date" Murshidabad-style mohurs that the Company struck using regnal year 17 of Shah Alam II regardless of actual minting year, a deliberate policy that persisted until the Coinage Act of 1835 finally abolished the practice.
Shah Alam II was nominally Mughal emperor, but by 1788 had been effectively blind, politically captive, and militarily dependent on Maratha protection following his brutal blinding at the hands of Ghulam Qadir in that same year. The Bengal Presidency continued issuing mohurs in his name well past any meaningful Mughal authority — a legal fiction maintained because Company coinage required the nominal sanction of a Mughal emperor to circulate without controversy in Indian markets.
KM#113 belongs to a long series of "frozen date" Murshidabad-style mohurs that the Company struck using regnal year 17 of Shah Alam II regardless of actual minting year, a deliberate policy that persisted until the Coinage Act of 1835 finally abolished the practice.