Ruler : Shah Jahan
Era : (AH 1037-1068, 1628-1658 AD)
Dynasty : Mughal
Mint : Balkh Mint
Denomination : Khani or Shahrukhi
Weight :  4.39 g
Diameter :  22.9 mm
Book Reference : KM 220.1

Obverse :
Within square frame “Shah jahan badshah ghazi”.

Reverse :
Within square frame Kalima Shahada, Caliphs name around.

Comment :
A most interesting coin, discovered only in the 1990s and providing confirmation of textual accounts of Shah Jahan’s campaign in Balkh. Those accounts have been identified by Shailendra Bhandare in a very interesting paper entitled “Numismatic Reflections on Shahjahan’s Balkh Campaign – 1646-47” to appear in Numismatic Digest, Vol. 39 (2015), and shed light on the conservatism we see in coinage.

The principal source quoted by Bhandare is the Padshahnama of Abdul Hamid Lahori. Shah Jahan mounted his campaign in 1646 at the invitation of the deposed Khan of Bukhara, who controlled Balkh at the time, and his forces were able to seize Balkh and its substantial treasury with ease in July of that year. However, the difficulties of maintaining an occupying force so far from the empire, in a place much colder than the Indian troops were used to, and facing constant harassment at the hands of the large numbers of Uzbek partisans, forced the Mughal army to reach a truce and withdraw by October 1647. Thus the occupation lasted just over a year.

Given that the Mughal occupation was so short, there was a question of whether they ever issued coins in Balkh. But it is quite certain from Lahori’s account that coins were indeed issued and this coin provides tangible proof of that. Apparently the first coins issued were mohurs and rupees, but the rupees did not find acceptance because they did not conform to the roughly 4 gm standard of the local coinage. As a result, Lahori tells us that khanis of that weight, in which copper would be mixed with the silver, would be struck and exchanged at a rate of four to a rupee. These khanis are what we call today shahrukhis, of which this coin is a great example. The coin is dated AH 1057. There were other coins dated 1056, and undated ones, three of which are shown below.

These coins are mostly occur with weak strikes, Very rare.