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1 Tanka - Shams al Din Muzaffar Shah III
| Issuer | Sultanate of Gujarat |
|---|---|
| Year | 1561-1572 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Technique | Hammered |
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| Obverse description | The obverse presents a densely inscribed field in bold Arabic calligraphy, divided into two registers by a horizontal line, with a vertical line further compartmentalizing the upper register into two sections. The legends, executed in the characteristic angular style of Gujarat Sultanate coinage, bear the royal titles and name of the issuing sultan. The script fills the flan to its margins, consistent with the hammered tanka tradition of the Gujarat Sultanate. The irregular flan edges are typical of hand-struck silver coinage of the period. No figural imagery is present, in accordance with Islamic numismatic convention. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | شمس الدين مظفر شاه |
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| Additional information |
Shams al-Din Muzaffar Shah III was the last independent sultan of Gujarat, restored to the throne in 1561 after the Mughals briefly occupied the sultanate. His reign ended in 1572 when Akbar personally led a second campaign to annex Gujarat — one of the wealthiest trading regions in the subcontinent — and Muzaffar fled, spending years as a fugitive before dying in 1592. Coins struck in his name thus span a sultanate living on borrowed time.
The Gujarat silver tanka of this period drew on over a century of established Sultanate coinage conventions that had survived multiple dynastic disruptions largely intact.