Delhi : Muhammad bin Tughluq , 1325 – 1351 A.D. Silver coin 32 rati.

Obverse:  Allah (God), Al Hakim (Governor), bi amar (My order) Reverse: Ahmed (A name/ name meaning, much praised), a (Arabic word alif) Al-Abbas (Abbasid sultanate), bu (Arabic word). Metal: Silver coin. Weight: 3.6 g. Diameter: 17 mm. Thickness: 4 mm. Ruler: Fakhr al-Din Muhammad bin Tughluq.  Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325 - 1351).  Ghiyasuddin was succeeded by his son Prince Juna khan, Fakhuruddin Muhammad the title of Muhammad Tughluq, in 1325 AD. Sultan had applied to the Abbasid Caliph Al – Hakim II (42nd Caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo) for formal recognition as a Muslim ruler, which the caliph gave in 1345. Sultan also some coins struck in the name of Caliph Al – Hakim II. In 1350 he was told that Taghi, the rebel leader of Gujarat, had taken shelter in the court of Jam of Sindh and that the Jam would not give him up. The Sultan, who was still in Gujarat, sent for more troops from Delhi and marched towards Thatta in Sindh. He fell sick on the way and died on 20 March 1351.    The token currency, 1330 A.D. Muhammad-bin-Tughluq has rightly been called the prince of moneyers. One of the earliest acts of his reign was to reform the entire system of coin age to determine the relative value of the precious metals and to found coins which might facilitate exchange and form convenient circulating media. But far more daring and original was his attempt to introduce a token currency. Historians have tried to discover the motive which led the Sultan to attempt this novel experiment. The heavy drain upon the treasury has been described as the principal reason which led to the issue of the token coins. It can not be denied that a great deficiency had been caused in the treasury by the prodigal generosity of the Sultan, the huge expenditure that had to be incurred upon the transferred of the capital and the expeditions fitted out to quell armed rebellions. But there were other reasons which must be mentioned giving an explanation of this measure. The taxation policy in the Doab had failed; and the famine that still stalked the most fertile part of the kingdom, which is the consequent decline in agriculture, must have brought about a perceptible fall in revenue of the state. It is not to be supposed that the Sultan was faced with bankruptcy; his treasure was not denuded of specie for he subsequently paid genuine coins for the new ones, and managed a most difficult  situation with astonishing success. He wished to increase his resources in order to carry into effect his grand plans of conquest and administrative reform, which appealed so powerfully to his ambitious nature. There was another reason; the Sultan was man of genius who delighted in originality and loved experimentation. With the examples of the Chinese and Persian rulers before him, he decided to try the experiment without slightest intention of defrauding or cheating his own subjects as is borne out by the legends on his coins. Copper coins were introduced and made legal tender; but the state failed to make the isue of the new coins a monopoly of its own. The result was, as the contemporary chronicler points out in right orthodox fashion, that the house of every Hindu of course as an orthodox Muslim he condones the offences of his coreligionists was turned into a mint and the Hindus of the various provinces manufactured lacks and crores on coins. Forgery was freely practiced by the Hindus and the Muslims; and people paid their taxes in the new coin and purchased arms, apparels and other articles of luxury. The village headmen, merchants, and landowners suppressed their gold and silver, and forged copper coins in abundance, and paid their dues with them. The result of this was that the state lost heavily while private individuals made enormous profits. The state was constantly defrauded for it was impossible to distinguish private forgeries from coins issued by the royal mint. Gold and silver became scarce; trade came to a stand-still and all business was paralyses. Great confusion prevailed; merchants refused to accept the new coins which became as “valueless as pebbles or potsherds.” When the Sultan saw the failure of the scheme, he repealed his former edict and allowed the people to exchange gold and silver coins for those of copper. Thousands of men brought these coins to the treasury and demanded gold and silver coins in return. The Sultan who meant no deception was considerably defrauded by his own people, and the treasury was drained by these demands. All token coins were completely withdrawn and the silence of Ibn Batuta who visited Delhi only three years later proves that no disastrous results ensued, and the people soon forgot the token currency. The failure of the scheme was inevitable in the India of the fourteenth century. To the people at large copper was copper, however benevolent the intentions of the Sultan might be. Sultan who pitched his expectations too high made no allowance for the conservative character of the people whose acceptance of a token currency even in modern times is more in the nature of a submission to an inevitable evil than willingness to profit by the use of convenient circulating medium. The mint was not a state monopoly; and the Sultan failed to provide adequate safeguards to prevent forgery. Elphinstone’s statement that the failure of the token currency was due to the king’s insolvency and the instability of his government is not justified by facts, for the Sultan withdrew all coins at once, and his credit remained unshaken. Mr. Gardner Brown has ascribed this currency muddle to the shortage in the world’s supply of silver in the fourteenth century, Soon after his accession Muhammad-bin-Tughluq introduced a gold dinar of 200 grains and an adali or a silver coin of 140 grains in place of the gold and silver tankas which had hitherto been in use, and which had weighed 175 grains each. The introduction of gold dinar and the revival of the adali show that there was an abundance of gold and a relative scarcity of silver in the country. The prize money brought by kafur from the Deccan consisted largely of jewellery and gold, and gold, and it was this which had brought about a fall in the value of gold. The scarcity of silver continued even after the death of Sultan Muhammaad. Only three silver coins of Firuz have come to light, and Edward Thomas mentions only two pieces of Muhammad bin Firuz, one of Mubarak Sahah, one of Muhammad bin Farid, and none of Alam Shah and his successors of the Lodi dynasty, and it is not until the middle of the sixteenth century that we come across a large number of silver coins, issued from the mints of Sher Shah Suri and his successors. Regarding the failure of this scheme, Edward Thomas, a numismatist of repute, has rightly observed: “There was no special machinery to mark the difference of the fabric of the royal mint and the handiwork of the moderately skilled artist. Unlike precautions taken to prevent the imitation of the Chinese paper notes, there was positively no check rpon the authenticity of the copper token, and no limit to the power of production by the masses at large.”