The pitis was Brunei's workhorse coinage for local petty trade, cast rather than struck, and the tin-lead alloy was a deliberate choice given the metal's regional abundance through Borneo's river systems and the prohibitive cost of importing copper. This type spans a remarkably long nominal date range — over two centuries — reflecting not sequential minting but a practice of continuing to cast coins under archaic honorific titulature long after the reigning sultan had changed.
Mitchell's cataloguing of this piece under the "Walk in Islam" series acknowledges the difficulty of precise attribution; the title Al-Adil ("the Just") and Al-Dzahir appear across multiple Bruneian reigns.
The pitis was Brunei's workhorse coinage for local petty trade, cast rather than struck, and the tin-lead alloy was a deliberate choice given the metal's regional abundance through Borneo's river systems and the prohibitive cost of importing copper. This type spans a remarkably long nominal date range — over two centuries — reflecting not sequential minting but a practice of continuing to cast coins under archaic honorific titulature long after the reigning sultan had changed.
Mitchell's cataloguing of this piece under the "Walk in Islam" series acknowledges the difficulty of precise attribution; the title Al-Adil ("the Just") and Al-Dzahir appear across multiple Bruneian reigns.