Chapter V: The Coinage of the Kingdom of Jaunpūr

The Eastern (Sharqī) kingdom of Jaunpūr, which also included the modern districts of Gorakhpūr, Tirhut and Bihār, owed its independence to the power and influence of the eunuch, Ḵẖ̱wāja-i-Jahān, who was appointed “Lord of the East,” by Māḥmūd Shāh II of Dehlī, in 1394. The coinage does not, however, begin till the reign of the third ruler Ibrāhīm (1400-40), and he and his three successors continued to mint till 1476, when Bahlol Lodī overthrew Ḥusain Shāh and re-annexed the province to Dehlī. The bulk of the Jaunpūr coinage consists of billon and copper pieces modelled on those of Dehlī. The commonest billon type has on the obverse the legend, “_The Khalif, the commander of the faithful, may his khalifate be perpetuated_”; the reverse gives the king’s name, and on coins of the last three rulers their pedigree as well. Maḥmūd Shāh (1440-58) introduced a type of copper with his name in a circle on the obverse, which was continued by his successors (Pl. IX, 5). Billon coins were struck in the name of Ḥusain Shāh for thirty years after his expulsion from Jaunpūr in 1476 (A.H. 881); and a few copper coins of about the same period bear the name of a rebel, Bārbak Shāh, a brother of Bahlol Lodī. The silver coins of Ibrāhīm and Maḥmūd are extremely scarce. Gold was struck by Ibrāhīm, Maḥmūd and Ḥusain. With the exception of one coin of Ibrāhīm, which follows the ordinary Dehlī model, all three rulers, evidently influenced by their neighbour, Jalālu-d-dīn Muḥammad of Bengal, used the “organ-pipe” arrangement of _tughra_ characters for the inscription of the reverse (Pl. IX, 4). The obverse inscription employed by Ibrāhīm and Maḥmūd, “_In the time of the supreme head of Islām, the deputy of the commander of the faithful_,” and the more correct form used by Ḥusain, which omits the words “_the deputy of_,” again show Dehlī influence. Only one coin, a large copper piece of Maḥmūd in the British Museum, is known to bear the mint name Jaunpūr.