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The Non-issue of Coinage: The Monetary Policies of the Post-Bahmani Sultanates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2018

PUSHKAR SOHONI
PUSHKAR SOHONI*
Affiliation:
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, Indiapsohoni@gmail.com
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Abstract

In the medieval world of Islamic kingdoms, the Friday sermon in the name of the reigning sultan (khutba) and the striking of coins (sikka) have been thought of as universal declarations of sovereignty. Yet, the sultanates of the Deccan that succeeded the Bahmani kingdom did not strike their own coins for almost a century after they had declared sovereign status. Therefore, two important issues are present here. First, the axiom of sovereign status for Islamic monarchs does have exceptions. Second, the circumstances surrounding the non-issue of coin, by these kingdoms, needs explanation. Similarly, the reasons why they all start to mint their own coins in the last quarter of the sixteenth century is also addressed. Mughal monetary policy is an essential element in this history.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 645 - 659
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2018 

Introduction

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, new ‘princely’ states were emerging from the debris of the Mughal empire. The rising European colonial powers, namely the English and the French, were increasingly seen as an economic threat, and their aggressive monetary policies were perceived as an index of their territorial ambitions.Footnote 1 Almost as a symbolic act of defiance, most of the princely states in India chose to continue minting coins in the name of the Mughal dynasty, which no longer exercised any real administrative or military power over most of the sub-continent. The name of the Mughal emperor and the regnal year were ‘frozen’ and new coins of the same design continued to be issued by several princely states (and even early colonial powers) after the demise of the Mughal emperor, relying on the nominal imperial authority of a past dynasty from which these new states had emerged. The persistence of Mughal coinage in the 18th century is a relatively well-documented phenomenon,Footnote 2 but it was not a new one and it had antecedents. In the 16th century, as the Mughals were rapidly expanding their then new empire, the sultanates of the Deccan had adopted the same strategy and were countering Mughal territorial ambitions through the use of their own coinage, which thus far they had not minted.

Scholarship has often seen coins as symbols of royal authority, a medium of communication, and a venue for royal eulogy and caliphal allegiance.Footnote 3 As coinage was the medium of territorial aggression through monetary means, it was also the natural medium of resistance to such hegemonic actions. The relative reliability of numismatics in recovering the history of independent states and sovereign rulers proves that it was an integral strategy employed to declare an arrival on the political stage. The phenomenon of affirming statehood through minting has been well documented and therefore well studied. What would it have meant for a functional monarchical sovereign to operate fully without independent coinage? This article questions the assumption that striking coins in the name of the ruling dynasty was a universal strategy for claiming sovereign royal status in the Islamicate world. The evidence presented would suggest that, at the very least, some of the late medieval and early modern states in South Asia did not view coinage as an integral and independent part of their strategy until their encounter with Mughal monetary and significatory pressures. The larger implications of this argument would question the signifiers of royalty that are assumed to be central to sovereignty. Was each one of the signifiers of royalty—in the case of a South Asian Islamicate context, ceremonial drums (naqqar), a parasol (chutr), sunshades (aftabgir), and so on—necessary for independence or was a culturally appropriate cluster of these symbols adequate? One possibility would be that a claim to being the rightful successor to an older state would obviate the need to produce new coinage; regionally, the continuity would be implicitly acknowledged and reinforced if all the other enactments of sovereign power were in place.

The role of sikka

The two prerogatives of kingship that were potent symbols of sovereignty in medieval and early modern Islamic kingdoms were the khutba and the sikka. The former was the Friday prayer sermon read in the name of the ruler, and the latter was the right of the sovereign to strike coins.Footnote 4 These were often the first actions undertaken by any rebel who wanted to declare independence and sovereignty. In South Asia, various sultanates made it a point to mint coins bearing the name of the ruler and had the khutba read in their name, along with the appropriation of other insignia and actions associated with royalty, such as rights to have an umbrella over their head (chutr) and the privilege of having their arrival announced with drums (naqqar). Several kings are known to us only through the numismatic evidence that yields their name, even if other documents are silent about their rule, thus confirming the symbolic potency of the act of minting coins.Footnote 5 Rulers in the Deccan, such as Daud Shah II (1397) and Mujahid Shah (1375-78), both Bahmani sultans, had coins minted in their name even though they ruled for insignificant periods of time.Footnote 6 In this context, an enigmatic lack of coinage issued by the immediate successor states to the Bahmanis is a key problem addressed in this article. The solution to this enigma cannot be obtained strictly through methods of economic history, but is partially rooted in cultural history. This article will focus on the five post-Bahmanid sultanates in the Deccan and on their policies for minting coins with their own sigilla (emblems or seals) throughout the 16th century.

There are precedents for the striking of coins to be found in the practices of early Islam, which were borrowed from the Byzantine and Sasanian empires to which the Arab caliphate was heir, but the right of placing the ruler's name on coins did not appear immediately in the 7th and 8th centuries.Footnote 7 By the 9th century, it was a well-established custom that any person desirous of staking a claim to sovereignty struck coins carrying his own names and titles to authorise his legitimacy. Theologically, the ruler was on the lowest rung in the hierarchy, below God, the Prophet, and the Caliph, all of whom had to be mentioned before the former in any document or pronouncement. However, a large number of coins retained only the names of politically favourable entities.Footnote 8 Minting coins bearing the insignia or the names of other dynasties or rulers meant either vassalage or a form of subservience, at least nominally. Such an occurrence is seen in late 15th and early 16th century South Asia, when the rulers of Khandesh minted coins as vassals of the Gujarat sultans.Footnote 9 The symbolic and psychological implications of such practices cannot be underestimated, and are seen in many periods of history in South Asia as a means of appropriating the authority of the old regime, as described by Deyell and Frykenberg in their essay on sovereignty and coinage:

Authority stamped its seal on the coin . . . depended for its acceptance, (a) upon the ability of people to recognize the device of the issuing authority (b) degree of confidence of people in the integrity and longevity of the issuing authority . . . This feature of the sikka gave rise to two psychological phenomena . . . taste in coinage devices and styles was conservative, and refined. There was a constant pressure to maintain and preserve. Familiar forms appeared on the coinage of new or unstable regimes. . . . [Minting privilege] came to be regarded as prestige-enhancing and as a sign of authority and power.Footnote 10

Beyond the symbolism of royalty and the precedents of the practice of sikka, there were pragmatic reasons for controlling the production and circulation of coins stamped with royal symbols and produced by centralised mints. As C. E. Bosworth noted, apart from the revenues accrued by channelling bullion through mints and mechanisms to devalue older coins, control of coinage also allowed the sovereigns to have power over the economy and trade:

From its origins in classical antiquity until today, manufacture of money, and the standards controlling it have been under governmental supervision. The manufacture of coin was an important source of revenue for the government which derived from the fees, or seignorage, charged by the mint for converting unrefined metal into coin. The government stamp on the metal served as a guarantee of its purity, and as a permit for it to become legal tender within the area of authority where it was issued. In the city states of antiquity, the coinage was first identified by images of local gods and other symbols, and was often guaranteed by the names of moneyers. Under the Roman and Parthian Empires, and later the Byzantines and Sāsānids, local coinages were swept away, and replaced by those whose principal feature was the ruler's bust, often with his name and titles, and thus monarchial coinage became the rule throughout the Mediterranean and Iranian world.Footnote 11

Thus, the striking of coins in the name of the ruler served not only a significatory function, but also to enforce territorial control through monetary policies. In the medieval and early modern Deccan, continuity with the coinage of an earlier dynasty was adequate to fulfil both these roles, until the arrival of the Mughals.

The Bahmanis and their successors

The Bahmani sultanate was founded as the result of a revolt against the rule of the Delhi sultan, Muhammad bin Tughluq, in 1347. It was an important polity that shaped the history of the Deccan, and the Bahmani sultans ruled for a period of almost 200 years. Founded in 1347, the kingdom was fragmented and powerless by 1518 and nominally survived until 1527.Footnote 12 The Bahmanis lost military and political potency towards the end of the 15th century, when in 1492 one of their ministers, Barid ul Mulk, usurped all the power at their court at Bidar. This resulted in further fragmentation of the Bahmani kingdom. Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golconda became capital cities of splinter kingdoms. Their rulers called themselves the Nizam Shahs, the Adil Shahs and the Qutb Shahs respectively. The first kings from these dynasties who are known to have considered themselves independent sultans and used the title ‘Shah’ were: Ahmad Nizam Shah I (r. 1490–1509), Ibrahim Adil Shah I (r. 1535–38), and Sultan Quli Qutb Shah (r. 1518–1543). In Bidar, within a few years after the death of the last Bahmani king in approximately 1538, Ali Barid Shah I (r. 1542–1580) declared himself the king of Bidar.Footnote 13 Berar of the Imad Shahs (of whom we have no coinage) was the fifth independent post-Bahmani sultanate, which declared independence in 1529.

It is indeed very strange that these five post-Bahmani kingdoms of the 16th century Deccan—Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, Adil Shahs of Bijapur, Qutb Shahs of Golconda, Barid Shahs of Bidar, and the Imad Shahs of Berar—seemed to deliberately avoid the right to strike coins in their own name for a long period after declaring independence. Beginning in 1490, when Ahmad Nizam Shah I declared himself independent, until around 1580, when Ali Adil Shah I of Bijapur and Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar first issued coins, there are almost no coins issued by any of these post-Bahmani Deccan sultanates.Footnote 14 A decline in monetisation has often been advanced as a possible reason for the lack of direct numismatic evidence. But the many arguments put forward by John Deyell for an earlier period in North IndiaFootnote 15 suggest that demonetisation can be discounted as an adequate explanation for this hiatus. Neither the lack of monetisation nor the paucity of precious metals can account for missing currency.Footnote 16 Besides, these Deccan sultanates were actually in various phases of economic expansion and growth throughout most of the 16th century, as can be inferred from the archaeological and material records.

Curiously, all the Deccan sultanates issued coins in the names of their rulers almost simultaneously, around 1580. The earliest dated coins struck by the post-Bahmani sultans were the hairpin-shaped silver larins from 986 [1578] struck by Ali Adil Shah I (r. 1558–1580), but these were used only in international trade. Ali Adil Shah I is also credited with minting copper coins but these are undated. It is likely that Ali Adil Shah I only had these copper coins struck in the last years of his reign, which would date them closer to 1580.Footnote 17 The earliest dated, circulating copper coins minted by the post-Bahmani sultans are from 989 H [1581], struck by Murtaza Nizam Shah I. The coins of the Qutb Shahs appeared as regular issues only under Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, who came to power around 1580, and the Barid Shahs also struck coins under Ibrahim Barid Shah for the first time in the same year.

Copper coins as data

In the absence of a large volume of primary sources, numismatic data can provide some of the narratives which would otherwise be inaccessible.Footnote 18 Though this discussion is limited to copper coins, the scarce gold and silver issues also conform with this narrative. The Nizam Shahs can be credited with two gold coins, both issued towards the end of the 16th century, and these are very rare. A single silver coin has been attributed to this dynasty quite recently.Footnote 19 The Adil Shahs only seem to have had gold coins from the reign of Muhammad Adil Shah in the early 17th century, but even then, these issues are very infrequently encountered. The few Adil Shahi gold coins that exist, share exactly the same metrology as the Vijayanagara ‘pagoda’, or the hun, which were widely in circulation throughout South India.Footnote 20 A number of minuscule gold fractions called fanams can be found in Bijapur domains, but none of them can be definitively attributed to the Adil Shahs. No silver coins of the Adil Shahs have ever been recovered.Footnote 21 We are not aware of any gold or silver coins of the Qutb Shahs and the Barid Shahs.Footnote 22

We can thus infer that copper constituted more than 99 per cent of all coinage of the post-Bahmani sultanates.Footnote 23 Gold and silver coins were either absent, or extremely rare, suggesting their role as ceremonial issues for very specific occasions. It is very likely that none of the gold or silver coins issued by these five sultanates were actually used as currency (except for the silver larin used in overseas trade).

Thus, the appendix contains data only on copper coin types.Footnote 24 The actual numbers of coins in circulation cannot be confirmed with direct evidence. However, extensive surveys and interviews with coin dealers and collectors, along with the sampling of many coins does suggest that Bahmani coinage was, in fact, the most numerous in the 16th century across the entire Deccan.Footnote 25 Towns in Khandesh and Berar (such as Dhule and Ellichpur) have yielded rich stockpiles of Gujarat coins in addition to the Bahmani coins. Using one source for hoard analysis—P. L. Gupta's Coin-Hoards from Maharashtra—the proportions of copper coins by dynasty recovered from the northern Deccan (as defined by the modern state of Maharashtra) are as follow: Gujarat sultans: 44.9 per cent, Marathas: 13.5 per cent, British princely states: 13.5 per cent, Bahmanis: 3.3 per cent, Adil Shahs: 2.11 per cent.Footnote 26 Such data demonstrate that the bulk of coins from the region of present-day Maharashtra contain large volumes of coins from either the Bahmani or Gujarat sultanates representing the 16th century, and very few from any of the post-Bahmani sultanates.Footnote 27 Such published information about coin hoards is, unfortunately, increasingly rare; today, most coin recoveries are undocumented. Large groupings of coins tend to be in the form of an accreted corpus, put together by chance recovery rather than by any scheme. These coins are then often reorganised by various levels of middlemen and intermediaries, who supply the markets for the benefit of both smelters and numismatists.Footnote 28 Groupings of coins may therefore not share the same provenance before their chance discovery, redistribution, and the subsequent route into a middleman's lot of coins, and hoard analysis is not possible for most coins.

A brief outline of the early coinage of the post-Bahmani sultanates is as follows. (Other details of coin types are provided in the Appendix.)

Adil Shahs

From the reign of Ibrahim Adil Shah I (1535-58), the Adil Shahs declared themselves ‘Shah’ as opposed to ‘Khan’.Footnote 29 But no coins of this dynasty are known before the reign of Ali Adil Shah I (1558-80), and the only dated coin is the silver larin, a hairpin-shaped currency widely used in the Persian Gulf region. This silver issue suggests a shortage of Gujarat silver coinage in Indian Ocean trade, which is not surprising since no common silver issues of Gujarat sultans were released after 1570.Footnote 30 Copper coins of Ali Adil Shah I must have appeared towards the end of his reign, sometime around 1578–80, when the larins were first issued in his name.

Nizam Shahs

The Nizam Shahs were the earliest of the post-Bahmani sultanates to declare independence, but historical accounts do not mention sikka as a marker used by Ahmad Nizam Shah I (1490-1509), as opposed to the chutr and the khutba that he appropriated.Footnote 31 The earliest known coins are from the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I (1565-88), and can be dated from 989 [1581] to 996 [1587].Footnote 32 The Nizam Shahs also counterstruck Bahmani and Gujarat coins with their own dies, suggesting that their own currency quite literally replaced that of the Bahmani and Gujarat kingdoms.Footnote 33

Qutb Shahs

The Qutb Shahs minted coins very early, but these seem to have been curiosities and were not used as currency. This can be inferred from the rarity of these issues.Footnote 34 Many scholars are suspicious of the authenticity or attribution of the coins of Jamshid Qutb Shah (1543-1550) and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah (1550).Footnote 35 A single coin type has been attributed to the reign of Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah (1550-1580) and that is on the basis of a single specimen, an event not entirely convincing.Footnote 36 Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (1580-1611) was the first Qutb Shahi sultan who issued coins as currency on a significant scale, with a large number of coin types.

Barid Shahs

Amir Qasim Barid became the Mir Jumla of the Bahmani kingdom in 1492. He died in 1504 and was succeeded by Amir Barid. However, the first coins of the sovereign Barid Shahs are only from the reign of Ibrahim Barid Shah (1580-87). These coins were modelled on the coinage struck in Kalimullah Shah Bahmani's name, and several mules exist to corroborate this continued use of Bahmani coins.Footnote 37

Imad Shahs

No coins of the Imad Shahs have been recovered yet, but Bahmani and Gujarat coins have been retrieved from their territories (Berar). We know that Imad ul Mulk had the khutba read in his own name as early as 1529.Footnote 38 The lack of any coins is explicable by the fact that the kingdom was annexed by Ahmadnagar in 1572. During this period none of the Deccan sultanates were minting coins in their own name, and were possibly just carrying on with old Bahmani dies.

Possible explanation

We know that coins were minted in the name of the Bahmani sultans until 1538, while Kalimullah Shah (1525-38), the last of the puppet kings, was alive. Bahmani currency seems to have been commonly used in all the post-Bahmani kingdoms. It continued to be the monetary lingua franca of the Deccan, for which it must have been minted in enormous quantities, even after his death. There is proof that coins in the name of the last three Bahmani kings—Mahmud, Waliullah, and Kalimullah—were minted by the Baridis posthumously,Footnote 39 if not also by other kings in the region.Footnote 40 The sheer volume of Bahmani coins in all the caches found across the states of Maharashtra, western Andhra Pradesh, and northern Karnataka support this hypothesis.Footnote 41 In northern Maharashtra, coins from Gujarat are also found in significant quantities in the areas of Khandesh, Berar, and western Marathwada.

In the 16th century, coinage was a common medium of exchange and coins were in widespread use as tokens of money, in contrast to the bleak picture of low monetisation that is sometimes presented. The overseas trade by volume in this period was certainly very high, although it is difficult to ascertain the exact balance of trade.Footnote 42 The most significant import throughout most of the 16th century was the prized commodity of war horses. This trade even had political considerations, and caused an uneasy peace to be forged between the Portuguese and the sultanates, as most of the Middle Eastern sea routes were increasingly controlled by the former in the 16th century. This Indian Ocean trade used standard acceptable currencies with high true metallic content. Gujarat was a sultanate that consistently minted copper and silver coinage in very large quantities for more than a century until it was annexed by the Mughals in 1576. In the 15th and most of the 16th centuries, Gujarat and Malwa coins were in wide circulation across at least the northern Deccan—an inference that is based on the large quantities recovered. Coins were struck in Gujarat under the Muzaffarid Gujarat sultans from the reign of Shamsuddin Muzaffar Shah I (1407-11) until the second reign of Shamsuddin Muzaffar Shah II (1583-84) in the names of all the sultans, except Daud Shah (1458-59). Even the Mughals, quite aberrantly, allowed Muzaffarid coins to be minted for a short time after the conquest of Gujarat, acknowledging the sphere of circulation of the coinage. The other common currency in the Deccan were the posthumously struck Bahmani coins, which enabled trade within and among the kingdoms of the Deccan. Since the institution of Bahmani rule was nominally acknowledged into the early 16th century (although the Bahmanis had no real power), it leads to the question: was the myth of the Bahmani dynasty kept alive for a long time for the sole cause of maintaining a common currency or were Bahmani coins “frozen” from the early 16th century because of the caliphal legitimacy that the Bahmanis had received in the 15th century?

I propose a hypothesis that incorporates both internal and external factors for the minting of coins by the Deccan sultanates, first in the name of the Bahmani sultans, and later in their own name. These factors would map neatly onto the economic and symbolic values of the coins, respectively.

Coins were issued as tokens of currency only with the advent of Mughal coinage in the Deccan, after the annexation of Malwa (1562) and Gujarat (1576). Mughal practice of accepting revenues only in their coins was one of the mechanisms of control underpinning their expansionist aspirations. The Mughals promoted their coinage very aggressively, insisting that every territory that they held, even a feudatory, be required to use their currency.Footnote 43 On the basis of coin hoards analysed, it appears that the Ahmadabad mint in Gujarat was the most prolific of all the mints under Akbar, and was at its productive apogee in the 1590s.Footnote 44 Akbar radically changed monetary and minting policies to create the monetary system that would endure for most of Mughal empire.Footnote 45 Thus, the issue of currency, which had been a non-issue for the Deccan sultanates, became an important economic and symbolic action in refuting Mughal aggression.

The Mughals, starting with Akbar, had aggressively turned Persian into the language of discourse for the empire, and were competing for patronage with the Safavid Court, which had become Twelver Shi‘i in a narrow sense.Footnote 46 The kingdoms in the Deccan had been wary of the Mughals and their expanding empire in North India and were trying to find a rival power from which they could source their own legitimacy. The Safavid Court provided them with just that, and to that effect, they sent several missions and embassies to the Safavids.Footnote 47 The loss of a single caliphal power from the early 16th century onwards had resulted in at least three bases of legitimisation of Islamic kingdoms: the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal courts. The Ottomans claimed the mantle of the ‘shadow’ Abbasid caliphate after their conquest of Egypt in 1517. Akbar proclaimed himself as the spiritual fount of the Islamic ’umma by issuing his famous mazhar in 1579, in which he declared himself the caliph of the age.Footnote 48 It is precisely around this time, as the Deccan sultanates realised the implications of Mughal expansionism, that they started minting coins in their own name. This was also the period when the Mughals laid claims to an overlordship of the Deccan.Footnote 49

The Bahmanis had received sanction for the sikka and khutba from the Abbasid caliph in Cairo in the reign of Muhammad Shah I (r. 1358–75 ce).Footnote 50 The successor states to the Bahmanis operated partly under that rubric of having received caliphal sanction to rule the Deccan. With Akbar's caliphal declaration in 1579, the legitimacy of the Bahmanis, and by extension, their successors, was in question. Their identity as successors to the Bahmanis ceased to confer legitimacy. Mughal claims to political authority over the Deccan, which were implied in the assumption of the mantle of the caliphate, were challenged through the action of minting coins in the name of the Deccan sultans themselves, who all sought allegiance with a different caliphal power.

The lack of coins from the Berar sultanate reinforces this view. Berar was annexed by the Nizam Shahs in 1574, before the Mughals and their coinage were established in the Deccan. Since the Nizam Shahs were not using their own coins and coinage, either as currency or as tools of their statecraft in this period, they must have chosen to continue with Bahmani currency in Berar.

There is one more factor to account for the relative paucity of 16th-century Deccan coinage. Mughal occupation of the Deccan kingdoms during the 16th and 17th centuries led to the transformation of large amounts of local Deccan coins and bullion into issues minted by the Mughals.

Conclusion

In the successor states of the Bahmanis, monetary transactions for most of the 16th century used Bahmani coins, which are found in large quantities across the Deccan. The symbolic attributes of minting coins were therefore not an issue for these sultanates until the arrival of the Mughals. Until then, the reinforcement of a connection with the Bahmani sultanate was actually a plan for legitimacy.Footnote 51 Monetarily, since Bahmani coins were acceptable across the Deccan, there was no need to replace them with others, and most of these kingdoms minted Bahmani coins posthumously. The 16th-century sultanates of the Deccan did not view the Bahmani sultanate as capable of any revival, and since they all accepted Bahmani currency, there was no polemical or political reason to issue their own coins. By the end of the 16th century, Mughal economic policies were mirrored by the Deccan kingdoms. As a result, they started issuing their own coinage as a counter-statement to the Mughal presence, especially since Muzaffarid silver coins from Gujarat were also no longer available in large quantities in the northern Deccan. Minting and circulating coins as a means of resistance and sovereignty was one of the strategies used by the Deccan sultans. This was a unique instance in the 16th century, when five functioning Islamic monarchies chose not to exercise the right to mint coins in their own names, for as many as 90 years after declaring sovereignty as independent sultans. Surely the larger question is how one interprets ‘legitimacy’, and whether the act of issuing coinage should be read as a presumptive declaration of accession (this would hardly qualify as legitimacy). The effect of this could be researched by the historian in a variety of ways.

The role of the khutba, sikka, and a caliphal diploma of investiture have been thought of as the absolute prerequisites for Islamic kingship. Yet, it would appear, at least, that the role of sikka has been overestimated in the light of historic practice. These symbolic attributes and actions of kingship were decided on political ground realities at a local level, as opposed to practices dictated by received Islamic conventions. Only when sovereignty was challenged did sikka become important. Otherwise, the post-Bahmani Deccan sultans were comfortable in their mutually accepted status as sovereign monarchs, an arrangement unchallenged by any of their neighbours. The striking of coins was an affirmation of kingship, more than a presumptive declaration. In this light, it is not surprising that as many as five sultans chose not to exercise a convention that they felt was redundant to their acceptability as kings. The shared histories of the origins of their royal houses was the source of their mutual understood legitimacy. The minting of coinage in their own names was therefore a superfluous act for all of them. It was only Mughal monetary policies and pressures that made them strike their own coins, to counter both the monetary and symbolic effects of the former's expansionism.

One might be tempted to suggest that the Mughal's monetary policy had a purely economic motivation, whereas the Deccani monetary resistance was purely symbolic. The latter was therefore doomed to fail because it lacked the structural state support required to sustain it. The Mughal monetary system was based on the standard of a silver rupee (with the large quantities of silver coming in from the new world), whereas the coinage issued by the Deccan sultans was almost all in copper, by this time devalued by the discovery of cheap Japanese mines and thus relegated to being used in small, local circuits.

Appendix: Chronology and coinage

Adil Shah

Nizam Shah

Qutb Shah

Barid Shah

Chart: Chronology and coinage

References

1 Garg, Sanjay, “The Raj and the Rajas: A Case of Numismatic Diplomacy”, in Felicitas: Essays in Numismatics, Epigraphy and History in Honour of Joe Cribb (Mumbai, 2011), p. 174Google Scholar: “The Mughal rulers of India held the right to strike sikka as inter jura majestatis (the exclusive prerogative of the sovereign). The East India Company, therefore, not only launched a diplomatic offensive against the numismatic subordination that the inscriptions on the coins of the princely states exhibited for the Mughal ruler, but also matched its territorial expansion in India with the establishment of its own coinage and abolition of the native mints”.

2 The interesting numismatic history of the 18th century is expounded in Bhandare, Shailendra, “A Metallic Mirror: Changing Representations of Sovereignty during the Raj”, in Coins in India: Power and Communication, (ed.) Ray, Himanshu Prabha (Mumbai, 2006), p. 85Google Scholar: “For common folk, the name of the emperor on coins offered an everyday testimony to his exalted status and role as the source of authority and legitimacy for governance. No one questioned it and as such, coins struck by a varied group of regional resurgent regimes . . . continued to bear the name of the emperor as the sovereign for a long period, even during the years when his real authority had become entirely nominal . . . Such a situation, alongside the political fragmentation that brought multifarious issuing authorities into the numismatic picture, gave rise to what numismatists regard as ‘quasi-Mughal’ or ‘pseudo-Mughal’ coinage”.

3 Hussain, Syed Ejaz, “Kings and Coins: Money as the State Media in the Indian Sultanates”, in Coins in India, (ed.) Ray, p. 56Google Scholar.

4 Bosworth, C. E., “Sikka”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1997), vol. IX, p. 592Google Scholar: “. . . the right of issuing gold and silver coinage was a royal prerogative. Hence in the caliphate, the operation of sikka, the right of the ruler to place his name on the coinage, eventually became one of the insignia of royal power, linked with that of the khutba [q.v.], the placing of the ruler's name in the bidding prayer during the Friday congregational worship. . .”.

5 This is not only a medieval or early modern phenomenon: it exists in the sub-continent as early as the first millennium bc. This has been noted by early historians of India, such as Smith, Vincent, Imperial Gazetteer of India (Oxford, 1909), vol. 2, p. 287Google Scholar: “After the time of Apollodotus, the Indian provinces were governed by sundry Greek kings, known only from their coins, and whose history is in consequence extremely obscure”.

6 Gupta, P. L., “Coinage”, in History of Medieval Deccan, vol. II, (eds) Joshi, P. M. and Sherwani, H. R. (Hyderabad, 1974), p. 438Google Scholar: “The Bahmani coins are equally important for the verification of the dates given in the chronicles. Sikka or the right to coin money, was regarded as one of the royal privileges; and in any dynasty, each claimant to throne and everyone who tried to carve out a kingdom for himself, lost no time in issuing at least a few coins after he came to power”. See also Sherwani, H. K., “Bahmani Coinage as a Source of Deccan history”, in Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. D. V. Potdar Sixty-first Birthday Commemoration Volume (Poona, 1950), pp. 204–218Google Scholar.

7 Bosworth, Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. IX, p. 592: “. . . the new holders of power within the conquered lands finally placed their own names on newly-minted coins or counter-stamped them on older coins, this was not a sign of a prerogative reserved to the caliphs . . . It can thus be said with some certainty that the idea of sikka as a prerogative of caliphal sovereignty had not yet developed in the early years of the Islamic community”.

8 Ibid., p. 595: “While in theory the right of sikka flowed downward from God, through the Prophet, to his vicegerent the caliph, and from him to his vassal/ally, and ultimately perhaps to the latter's heir or an important governor, in practice it now moved in the opposite direction. The local strong man who controlled the mint defined his political and even religious position by acknowledging only those overlords who were valuable to his status, or by choosing Kur'anic and other legends that defined his allegiance in the Sunni-Shi'i divide”.

9 Balsekar, Dilip P. and Bhamre, Sarjerao J., Khandesh Faruqi Gharane Itihas va Nani (Anjaneri, Nasik, 2008)Google Scholar.

10 Deyell, John S. and Frykenberg, Robert E., “Sovereignty and the ‘SIKKA’ Under Company Raj: Minting Prerogative and Imperial Legitimacy in India”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, XIX, 1 (Jan-Mar 1982), p. 9Google Scholar.

11 Bosworth, Encyclopaedia of Islam, p. 592.

12 Devare, T. N., A Short History of Persian Literature: At the Bahmani, the Adilshahi and the Qutbshahi Courts (Poona, 1961), p. 65Google Scholar.

13 This date of death for Kalimullah Shah, the last Bahmani sultan, is itself based on numismatic evidence, creating a slightly circular argument. The actual date of his death in Ahmadnagar, where he was in exile, is unknown.

14 The exceptions are the singular coin issues of the Golconda kings, Jamshid Qutb Shah (1543-50) and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah (1550). These are extremely rare and the coin attributed to the latter is based on an uncertain reading of a single coin. Only one type of rare issue can be attributed to the next king, Ibrahim Qutb Shah (1550-80), even though he ruled for 30 years, suggesting that these coins were not meant for circulation, but were novelty issues.

15 Deyell, John, Living Without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval North India (Delhi, 1990), p. 5Google Scholar.

16 There are also secondary historic references to the common availability of copper coins in the middle of the 16th century. See, for example, a description of the battle of Talikota by Taylor, Philip Meadows, A Student's Manual of the History of India (London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1871), p. 299Google Scholar: “As [the Vijayanagara army] approached it was met by a withering fire from the large guns, of shot, and copper money enclosed in strong canvas bags. . .”.

17 Khan, Mohammad Abdul Wali, Copper Coins of the Adil Shahi Dynasty of Bijapur (Hyderabad, 1980)Google Scholar.

18 For a discussion of Islamic coins as a historical source, see Heidemann, Stefan, “Numismatics”, in A New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 1, (ed.) Robinson, Chase (Cambridge, 2010), Chapter 16, pp. 648-653Google Scholar.

19 Shah, Hasmukh, “A Pedigree ½ Tanka of Gujarat Sultan Ahmad Shah I and a Silver Coin of Murtiza Nizam Shah I”, Nidhi, Vol. II (Nagpur, 2008), pp. 113–114Google Scholar.

20 Gupta, History of Medieval Deccan, Vol. II, (eds) Joshi and Sherwani, p. 443, “From a farman issued by him [Adil Shah], it appears that the bankers, merchants and village people were reluctant to accept his huns”.

21 The Adil Shahi silver currency unit is called a larin (or lari), a hairpin-shaped silver ingot, which was minted and circulated largely in the port town of Dabhol. This currency is of an imported pattern and is only found around the ports of the Adil Shahs, with no real circulation inland. The larin is named after a region in Iran and was an established mode of payment in Gujarat and the western seaboard of India, as part of the more extensive Indian Ocean trade. For more information about the larin, see Wood, Howland, The Gampola Larin Hoard (New York, American Numismatic Society, 1934)Google Scholar. There is information about this kind of currency specific to the Deccan in Gupta, History of Medieval Deccan, (eds) Joshi and Sherwani, p. 443. Also see Haider, Najaf, “Precious Metal Flows and Currency Circulation in the Mughal Empire”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient: Special issue: Money in the Orient, 39, 3 (1996), pp. 298–364CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Khan, Mir Fazaluddin Ali, “Qutb Shahi Coins”, in Studies in Archaeology and History: Commemoration Volume of Prof S. Nurul Hasan (Rampur, 2003), pp. 227–230Google Scholar.

23 This prevalence of copper coins was also true of the Bahmanis; this can be observed in museum collections. Also see Gupta, History of Medieval Deccan, (eds) Joshi and Sherwani, p. 432, “While gold coins are scarce, copper coins are available in large numbers”.

24 The coin types are based on Goron, Stan and Goenka, J. P., Coins of the Indian Sultanates: Covering the Area of Present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (New Delhi, 2001)Google Scholar.

25 In fact, a typical grouping of a hundred coins will contain around 70 or more Bahmani specimens. This observation is based on groupings of coins from the Deccan as brought by low-level dealers.

26 Gupta, Parmeshwari Lal, Coins-Hoards from Maharashtra. Numismatic Notes and Monographs No. 16 (Varanasi, 1970)Google Scholar.

27 See footnote 41 for details of coin groupings and hoards recovered in the past 20 years.

28 The issues and problems in the treatment of coins in South Asia are expounded by Deyell, Living Without Silver, Appendix D, “Coin Hoard Analysis in the South Asian Context”, pp. 272-291.

29 Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 314: “Readers should note that it was Ibrahim Adil Shah I who first seems to have called himself shah rather than khan”. According to Sherwani, H. R., “Independence of Bahmani Governors”, in The Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 9th Session (Annamalai University, 1945), p. 161Google Scholar: “Ibrahim Adil Shah called himself Shah in 1539, and the date therefore may be taken as the death of Waliullah Shah Bahmani”.

30 Shams ud din Muzaffar III issued a scarce ceremonial silver coin in his second reign in 1583, but ten years of Mughal rule had already had an impact on the monetary system. Within certain mercantile circuits in Gujarat, such as Surat, Baroda, and Broach, non-standard coinage such as the Mahmudi were common in circulation, and even the Mughals had to capitulate to this system of local coinage. For more details on such money, see Om Prakash, “Co-existence of Standardized and Humble Money: The Case of Mughal India”, Paper for Session 61 of the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, Finland, 21 to 25 August 2006.

31 Joshi, P. M., “Adil Shahi Administration”, in Proceedings of the Indian Historical Congress, 4th Session (Lahore, 1940), p. 235Google Scholar: “The Deccan Sultanates copied these Bahmani institutions when they became independent. But, except the Sultan of Golconda, none of them—during the sixteenth century—arrogated to themselves the right of issuing gold coins or of striking the naubat five times a day”. However, Ahmad Nizam Shah I is mentioned as striking coins in his own name by later authors, such as Michell, George, The Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (New York, 1999), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 326: “The coins of this ruler [Murtaza Nizam Shah I (1565-88)], the first of the Nizam Shahi rulers to issue coins in his own name, are known dated from 989 [1581] to 996 [1587]”.

33 Ibid.: “A number of the Nagar copper coins are known overstruck on the coins of the Bahmanis and the sultans of Gujarat”. A couple of the Gujarat (Nasiruddin Mahumad III and Muzaffar Shah II) and Bahmani copper coins counterstruck by the Nizam Shahs can be seen in Sanjay Godbole, “Coins of Sultan of Gujarat Restruck by Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar” and “Copper Coin of Kalimullah Shah Bahmani Restruck by Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar”, Journal of the Numismatic Society of India, 73 (2011).

34 Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 332: “Qutb ul Mulk declared independence in 1518, upon the death of Mahmud Bahman Shah . . . Jamshid Qutb Shah (1543-50) is the first ruler to have coins minted. There are two types, both rare in their occurrence. Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah (1550-80) has only one coin type”.

35 Gupta, History of Medieval Deccan, (eds) Joshi and Sherwani, footnote on p. 444: “It is doubtful whether the coins attributed to Jamshid and Subhan are genuine”. However, the coins of Jamshid Qutb Shah and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah have been catalogued as such in Khan, Mohammad Abdul Wali, Qutub Shahi Coins in the Andhra Pradesh Government Museum (Hyderabad, 1961), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

36 Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 335: “Despite his thirty year rule, very few coins of this ruler have been found or attributed . . . Otherwise the only other coin published for this ruler is a smallish falus of unstated weight published in NCirc May 1955, again with a reading which is by no means certain from the illustration”.

37 Khan, Mohammad Abdul Wali and Gupta, Parmeshwari Lal, Copper Coins of Barid Shahi of Bidar and Nizam Shahi of Ahmadnagar (Hyderabad, 1982), pp. 3–4Google Scholar: “It is only the fourth ruler of the dynasty . . . who may, with certainty, be said to have issued coins in the latter part of his reign in the name of his own dynasty. In the earlier coins, he retained the name of the Bahmani ruler Kalimullah on the obverse; it is only on the reverse that he placed a new legend Bi-amr-i-Sultan Barid Shah”.

The mules are also mentioned in Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 321: “The first dated coins in the Bidar series were struck during the reign of this ruler [Ibrahim Barid Shah (1580-87)]. Four different types are known so far. One of them has the name of Kalimullah, the last Bahmani ruler, on the reverse”. However, the coin itself is dated 993 ah [1585].

38 Sherwani, “Independence of Bahmani Governors”, p. 161.

39 With the later Bahmanis, the attribution of coins becomes difficult in light of the lack of uniformity in dies and metrology. This is discussed in some detail in the description of the coins of Mahmud Shah in Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 305: “. . . the copper is copious and struck in a large number of varieties . . . The style of engraving varies considerably suggesting that the coins were struck at a number of different mints. No mint-name, however, is found on the coins. The weight of the coins varies a great deal and it becomes more difficult to assign them to specific denominations . . . It is noticeable that a greater number of coins with garbled legends occur during the reign. As few of the copper coins have legible dates, it is not possible to determine any sequence in the issue of the coins”. The catalogue lists 29 types, with a note that: “Other copper types of this ruler probably exist”. Also: “Some of the gani coins are quite heavy, weighing around 17 g. The dates on the coins appear to be mainly fixed, from the previous reign or posthumous. Some are dated 930 (like the coins of Waliullah), and some even appear to have 893! While others have dates between 950 and 952. By that time, the Bahmani sultanate had ceased to exist but the successor rulers were not yet bold enough to strike coins in their own names” (p. 309). The posthumous issue is also discussed in Gupta, History of Medieval Deccan, (eds) Joshi and Sherwani, p. 439: “According to Ferishta, Kalimullah left his capital in 934 and took asylum at Ahmadnagar, where he died soon after. But coins dated 942, 950, 951 and 952 are known to have been issued in his name . . . the fact remains that some coins were issued posthumously in his name. They undoubtedly indicate that the Bahmanis held their prestige even after their total extinction”.

40 The numbers of late Bahmani coins found in excellent condition across a very large area of the Deccan confirms this trend. Sherwani, “Independence of Bahmani Governors”, p. 162, suggests: “. . . they [the independent post-Bahmani kingdoms] issued coins in the name of the sovereign without any fear of interference from the center”.

41 Some of the statistical data for hoards can be found in Gupta, P. L., Coin Hoards from Maharashtra (Varanasi, 1970)Google Scholar and Coin Hoards from Gujarat State (Varanasi, 1969). The following statistics have been recovered from personal correspondence with dealer-collector networks and individuals (particularly Sanjay Godbole of Pune and the late Fasihuddin Qazi of Nagpur). In Nanded district, out of 10.0 kg of coins found in 2002-03, 3.0 kg were Bahmani coins from the 16th century, 5.0 kg were minted under Burhan Nizam Shah III (1610-1635), and the rest were from the 17th century or later. At Udgir, 10.0 kg of Bahmani coins were found in 2002-03. In most other places, like Akola, Amravati, and other districts in Berar, the coin hoards mostly comprised Mughal coins minted under Akbar, Jehangir, and Shah Jahan, in addition to later coinage. In 1996, of all the coins recovered from Nevasa (Ahmadnagar district), 40 per cent were Bahmani and the rest were largely Satvahana. In 1991, Bahmani and Mughal coins were recovered in equal quantities in Akola, including 0.5 kg of Bahmani silver coins. In Pune, in 1984, approximately 11.0 kg of coins were recovered, mostly Bahmani. In 1988, a large hoard of almost 100.0 kg of Bahmani coins in near-mint condition was recovered from Pune. In 1989, in the locality of Guruwar Peth in Pune, around 10.0 kg of early Bahmani coins were discovered, along with 2.0 kg of Nizam Shahi coins. In Ahmadnagar city itself, almost 30 per cent of coins found in the past 30 years are Bahmani types, and the rest are largely of the later Nizam Shahs. In Khuldabad, almost 60 per cent of coins discovered have been Bahmani coins, including many rare coins in the name of Daud Shah II. At Bidar, in 2004, 90 per cent of coins found were Bahmani coins, and the remainder were largely Mughal. At Gulbarga, almost 90 per cent of all coins found have been of the Bahmanis. Since most of this information is based on informal and oral accounts, and because these coin groupings have long since dispersed, hoard analysis has not been pursued. However, these data are sufficient to broadly suggest the areas of present-day Maharashtra, eastern Andhra Pradesh, and northern Karnataka as the territories within which Bahmani coinage was widely prevalent.

42 There is some research on monetary flows and trade, mostly centred around intermediary ports like Hormuz: see Haider, Najaf, “Precious Metal Flows and Currency Circulation in the Mughal Empire”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient—Money in the Orient, 39, 3 (1996), pp. 298–364CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “Precious Metal Flows and Prices”, in his Money and the Market in India: 1100-1700 (Delhi, New York, 1994)Google Scholar.

43 Richards, J. F., “Mughal State Finance and the Premodern World Economy”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23, 2 (April 1981), p. 297CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Akbar and his successors established mints in every provincial capital city and in other important trading cities throughout the empire. Centrally appointed officers and employees of the mints accepted bullion or coin from local moneychangers, from merchants, or other private individuals. These officers . . . returned to the patron newly struck gold, silver and copper coins . . . The Mughal coinage system, with its uniform imperial standards of weights and measures, was imposed throughout the subcontinent over dozens of local monetary systems. The finance ministry's unyielding requirement that all tax and tribute be paid in imperial coin was the effective impulse for diffusion of the rupee”. See also Joshi, P. M., “Coins Current in the Kingdom of Golkonda”, in Studies in the History of the Deccan: Medieval and Modern—Prof. A R Kulkarni Felicitation Volume (Delhi, 2002), pp. 146–155Google Scholar: “By the treaty of 1636 Golconda was reduced more or less to the position of a vassal state of the Mughal empire and one of the conditions of the treaty was that gold and silver coins issued from Golconda were to bear the Mughal coins legends. Moreover the dies of the first issues were engraved at the Imperial Court and sent to Golconda by the order of Shah Jahan”.

44 Strnad, Jaroslav, Monetary History of Mughal India as Reflected in Silver Coin Hoards (Delhi, 2001), pp. 71–73Google Scholar.

45 Martin, M. H., “The Reforms of the Sixteenth Century and Akbar's Administration: Metrological and Monetary Considerations”, in The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, (ed.) Richards, J. F. (Delhi, 1987), pp. 68–99Google Scholar.

46 Alam, Muzaffar, The Languages of Political Islam in India c. 1200-1800 (Chicago, 2004), pp. 124–128Google Scholar.

47 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay and Alam, Muzaffar, “The Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion, ca. 1600: Contemporary Perspectives”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 47, 3 (2004), pp. 367–368CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “For while the Mughal claim by the 1580s was that the whole of the Deccan fell under their suzerainty, the rulers of neither Bijapur nor Golkonda could countenance such a claim . . . Besides, from the early sixteenth century, there was the Safavid connection, and the fact that both Bijapur and Golkonda had periodically recognised in the Safavids a form of ‘ritual suzerainty’, often inserting the names of the rulers of Iran for example into the Friday prayers in their capital cities. The flow of Iranian migrants into the Deccan in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and the fact that these migrants constituted a significant part of the elite in both Bijapur and Golkonda, only served to strengthen these ties”.

48 Shea, David and Troyer, Anthony (translators), Dabistan, or School of Manners (Paris, Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1843), p. cxlviiGoogle Scholar: “At last, in the month of December, A.D. 1579, twenty-six years before his death, he substituted for the common profession of the Muhammedans the new: “There is no God but God, and Akbar his khalif (or deputy)”.

49 Subrahmanyam and Alam, “The Deccan Frontier”, p. 362, “The point to be made then is that while there is a certain retrospective inevitability about Mughal expansion, contemporaries did not wholly share this sense until the late sixteenth century”.

50 Sherwani, H. K., The Bahmanis of the Deccan (New Delhi, 1985), p. 87Google Scholar.

51 This would also explain the attitude of deference that all the post-Bahmani sultanates had towards the Bahmani royal family and their presence. Sherwani, “Independence of Bahmani Governors”, p. 160: “It is remarkable that every time a powerful governor like the ruler of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar gets the better of the royal forces against a Barid resulting in the defeat of the [Bahmani] king, he invariably treats him in a right royal manner as befits a suzerain, and never acts as an independent monarch”.

52 The italics indicate rulers in whose names no coins have been minted. The statistics are all from a standard catalogue of coins by Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates. The series are clusters of coins of similar types, or fractions of the same type.