5 Para - Mahmud II

These billon paras were struck at the Misr mint during a period when Egypt was effectively governed by Muhammad Ali Pasha, operating under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. Muhammad Ali had been systematically modernizing Egypt's economy and military, and the coinage of this period reflects the fiscal strain of funding his campaigns — particularly the costly intervention in the Greek War of Independence, where his son Ibrahim Pasha commanded the Egyptian fleet destroyed at Navarino in 1827.

The wide weight variation across specimens is not accidental sloppiness — billon production at Misr during this decade was notoriously inconsistent in both alloy composition and flan preparation.