Barghash bin Said commissioned this pattern as part of a broader push to establish a formal minted coinage for Zanzibar — a sultanate that had grown enormously wealthy on cloves and the East African slave trade. The Royal Mint in London struck several trial pieces in different compositions during 1882, testing nickel among them. The official circulation issue ultimately appeared in copper, making nickel survivors like this one purely experimental.
Barghash died in 1888, having never seen a fully realized Zanzibari coinage system come to fruition on his own terms.
Barghash bin Said commissioned this pattern as part of a broader push to establish a formal minted coinage for Zanzibar — a sultanate that had grown enormously wealthy on cloves and the East African slave trade. The Royal Mint in London struck several trial pieces in different compositions during 1882, testing nickel among them. The official circulation issue ultimately appeared in copper, making nickel survivors like this one purely experimental.
Barghash died in 1888, having never seen a fully realized Zanzibari coinage system come to fruition on his own terms.