1 Tanka - Muhammad bin Tughluq

Muhammad bin Tughluq's decision to introduce a token currency in billon — and earlier in copper — during the late 1320s was one of the most ambitious and catastrophic monetary experiments in medieval Indian history. The sultan ordered that these coins be accepted at the value of silver, without the metallic backing to support the parity. Merchants and subject populations quickly began counterfeiting on a massive scale, and the government was eventually forced to redeem the debased tokens for silver from the treasury, a reversal that reportedly drained the royal reserves.

Ibn Battuta, who visited the Delhi Sultanate during this period, described the chaos firsthand.