5 Para - Mahmud II

Mahmud II's Egyptian copper paras of this period were struck at the Misr (Cairo) mint during a particularly volatile phase of Ottoman-Egyptian relations — just years after Muhammad Ali had crushed the Ottoman army at Konya in 1832 and effectively controlled Syria as well as Egypt. The coins bore the sultan's name as a formality of suzerainty that, militarily, was largely fictional at the time.

The series was cut short when the Convention of London in 1840 forced Muhammad Ali to relinquish Syria, reshuffling the political calculus that had made these nominal Ottoman issues so diplomatically awkward.