Shah Alam II was Mughal emperor in little more than name by the time these rupees were struck — blinded by the Rohilla chieftain Ghulam Qadir in 1788, he spent his final decades as a pensioner of the East India Company. The Bengal Presidency continued issuing rupees in his name well past any practical Mughal authority, a calculated fiction that allowed the Company to collect revenue under the legitimizing cover of imperial sanction without formally declaring sovereign coinage of their own.
Shah Alam II died in 1806, which closes this issue's production window almost to the day.
Shah Alam II was Mughal emperor in little more than name by the time these rupees were struck — blinded by the Rohilla chieftain Ghulam Qadir in 1788, he spent his final decades as a pensioner of the East India Company. The Bengal Presidency continued issuing rupees in his name well past any practical Mughal authority, a calculated fiction that allowed the Company to collect revenue under the legitimizing cover of imperial sanction without formally declaring sovereign coinage of their own.
Shah Alam II died in 1806, which closes this issue's production window almost to the day.