Habibullah Khan came to power in 1901 following the death of his father Abdur Rahman, who had ruled with an iron grip and carefully managed Afghanistan's position between British India and Tsarist Russia. Habibullah inherited that balancing act intact. His early coinage, including this rupee, was struck at the Kabul mint under conditions that produced notoriously inconsistent die alignment — many examples show significant rotation between obverse and reverse, a known characteristic of KM#840 rather than damage or mishandling.
Habibullah Khan came to power in 1901 following the death of his father Abdur Rahman, who had ruled with an iron grip and carefully managed Afghanistan's position between British India and Tsarist Russia. Habibullah inherited that balancing act intact. His early coinage, including this rupee, was struck at the Kabul mint under conditions that produced notoriously inconsistent die alignment — many examples show significant rotation between obverse and reverse, a known characteristic of KM#840 rather than damage or mishandling.