1 Tanka - Nasir al-Din Mahmud I ibn Iltutmish

Nasir al-Din Mahmud I was, by medieval accounts, an unusually pious sultan who allegedly supported himself by copying Qurans rather than drawing from the treasury — a detail repeated by Ibn Battuta and others, though its literal truth is debated. His twenty-year reign was functionally dominated by his powerful regent and father-in-law Balban, who held genuine authority while the sultan retained ceremonial legitimacy. The coinage issued under his name thus reflects a court politics of carefully maintained fictions.

Gold tankAs from this reign are considerably scarcer than their billon counterparts, as the Delhi Sultanate's gold issues were never struck in large numbers relative to the broader monetary economy.