5 Mithqual - Guangxu Kashgar, Wu Qian Ka Shen

Kashgar's mint operated under conditions unlike any other in the Qing empire — geographically isolated in the Tarim Basin, cut off from central treasury oversight, and producing coinage calibrated to local Afghan and Central Asian trade weight standards rather than Beijing's. The mithqual unit itself is borrowed from Islamic metrology, reflecting the commercial reality that Kashgar's markets answered to Kokand and Kabul as much as to the Qing court. These pieces circulated alongside Russian and British colonial silver in a region both empires were actively contesting.

The Y#19a designation distinguishes this from related Kashgar types by die specifics documented by Kann and later systematized by Yeoman. Mint output was inconsistent across the production window, and survivors show considerable variation in strike quality attributable to worn local dies rarely refreshed from the east.