Larin - Abbas I

The larin was a distinctly Persian contribution to Indian Ocean trade currency — a silver wire bent double and stamped, circulating from the Persian Gulf to Ceylon and the Swahili coast. Abbas I inherited a monetary system in disarray after his predecessors' wars with the Ottomans had drained the treasury, and larins became one of the workhorses of his commercial expansion, particularly through the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas, which he founded and named after himself in 1615 following the expulsion of the Portuguese from Hormuz.

Portuguese traders had been so dependent on the larin that they minted imitations — a rare case of a European colonial power copying a local currency rather than displacing it.