Shah Alam II was Mughal emperor in name only by this period — blind, pensioned, and effectively a prisoner of whichever power found him useful at the time. Awadh's nawabs struck in his name as a matter of political legitimacy, the fiction of Mughal suzerainty still carrying enough weight to justify the formality. The Najibabad mint is the distinguishing detail here: a town on the Ganges plain originally fortified by the Rohilla chieftain Najib ud-Daula, it operated under Awadh's expanding administrative reach during exactly this window.
Shah Alam II was Mughal emperor in name only by this period — blind, pensioned, and effectively a prisoner of whichever power found him useful at the time. Awadh's nawabs struck in his name as a matter of political legitimacy, the fiction of Mughal suzerainty still carrying enough weight to justify the formality. The Najibabad mint is the distinguishing detail here: a town on the Ganges plain originally fortified by the Rohilla chieftain Najib ud-Daula, it operated under Awadh's expanding administrative reach during exactly this window.