Eastern world eastward of the Euphrates and thence extending
northward and reaching into Europe. The most important of these
states for their money are that of the Mongols of Persia (1256–1349),
founded by Hulagu, the conqueror of Bagdad, and that of the khans
of the Golden Horde (1224–1502). Both struck silver, but there is
also gold coinage of the Mongols of Persia, who more frequently use
the Mongol character for their names and titles than is done under the
kindred line. The power of the Mongols was held in check by the
Mameluke kings of Egypt and Syria, slave-princes of two dynasties,
the Baḥri (1250–1390) and the Burji (1382–1517), who struck money
in the three metals. The Mongol power waned, but was revived by
Timur (Tamerlane), who during his rule (1369–1405) recovered all
that had been lost. He and his successors (to 1500) struck silver,
copper, and brass money (see Pl. IV. fig. 13). The Ottoman Turks,
whose power had been gradually growing from 1299 onwards, after a
desperate struggle with Timūr (defeat of Bayezid I. at Angora in
1402), gradually absorbed the whole Mahommedan world west of the
Tigris, except only Morocco, where they had but a momentary
dominion. Constantinople fell to them in 1453, Syria, Egypt and
Arabia in 1517. Their money of gold, silver, base metal and bronze
is devoid of historical interest. In Tunis and Morocco a group of
Berber lines long maintained themselves, but at length only one
survived, that of the sharifs of Morocco, claiming Arab descent, now
ruling as the sole independent Moslem dynasty of northern Africa.
Its recent coinage is singularly barbarous. It may be remarked that
Tunis and Egypt have long coined Turkish money in their own
mints, the more western state latterly adding the name of its hereditary
prince to that of the sultan.
The coins of the shahs of Persia have their origin with Ismā’il (1502). They are struck in the three metals, and are remarkable for the elegance of their inscriptions, sometimes in flowing Arabic, sometimes in the still more flexuous native character (see Pl. IV. fig. 12). The inscriptions are at first Arabic; after a time the religious formulae are in this language and the royal legend in Persia. Persian, usually as a poetical distich. The Persian series is also remarkable for the autonomous issues of its cities in copper, the obverse bearing some type, usually an animal. The coins of the Afghan amirs form a class resembling in inscriptions those of the Persians, and equally using Persian distichs. They commence with Ahmad Shāh Durrāni (1747).
The first native Indian coinage consists of primitive pieces (the earliest perhaps of the 4th century B.C.) of silver and copper with countermarks (known as “punch-marked” coins). Foreign coins (Persian and Athenian) circulated in the country from the 5th century; the silver coinage of Sophytes, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, shows Athenian influence; and India. there are not a few coins of Indian provenance showing direct imitation or modification of Athenian types (as the substitution of an eagle for the owl). Alexander himself is represented by a coinage of square bronze pieces. Certain tetradrachms and diobols with the name of Alexander and types: head of Zeus and eagle, probably belong to the end of the 4th century. But the coinage which was to have most effect on that of India was the Bactrian (see also under Bactria). This is at first a pure Greek coinage, of fine style, beginning with Diodotus (gold, silver, bronze), who revolted from Antiochus II., c. 250 B.C. For about a century the art of these coins, at least as regards portraiture, ranks very high for realism and vigour. The Bactrian rulers seem first to have made incursions into the Kabul valley and north India about 200 B.C., the first Indian conquests being perhaps made by Euthydemus and Demetrius. Of the latter there exists a bronze coin with the regular Greek types, but of the characteristic square Indian form, with a translation on the reverse into Kharoshthi characters of the obverse Greek inscription. Some of the coins of succeeding kings are very remarkable, as the tetradrachms of Antimachus (see Pl. IV. fig. 5), with a portrait reminding us of good Italian medals, and the unique 20-stater gold piece of Eucratides (the largest Greek gold coin known to us, although its genuineness has been questioned). The coinage from about 160 B.C. becomes more and more Indian, the Greek power being definitely transferred south of the Paropanisus in the second half of the 2nd century. The Attic standard) which had been used for the silver gradually gave way to the Persian. The Greek princes went on reigning in India to about 20 B.C.; their chronology is very obscure. During the last two centuries B.C. several other coinages existed in north India. (1) The Scythic Sacae or Sakas invaded Bactria and then India; the earliest Saka coinage of north India (that of Maues in the Punjab, c. 120 B.C.) shows Parthian influence; so do the slightly later coins of Vonones and others who reigned in Kandahar and Seistan. (2) Another large and varied group of coins consists of the issues of native states, some of which go back to before 200 B.C. Of these we may note the coins of Eran (Sagar district) showing the gradual development of the punch-marked coin into the coin with a type, made up of a collection of such punch-symbols struck from one die; and the coins of Taxila, the earliest of which are struck with a type on one side only. From these were imitated the copper coins of the Greeks, Pantaleon and Agathocles (c. 190 B.C.), which again inspired the later coins of Taxila with types on both sides.—In the first century of our era the Indo-Parthian dynasty of Gondophares (Gundophorus of the Apocryphal Acts of St Thomas) reigned in Kandahar and Seistan and in India, and is represented by coins. About 25 B.C. the Kushanas (as the Yue-chi were called, after their most important tribe) conquered the remains of the Greek kingdom in the Kabul valley, and in the 1st century of our era they subdued the Punjab and the territory as far as the Jumna. The well-known gold coinage of the Kushanas (due probably to the influx of Roman gold into India) is begun by Hima Kadphises (c. A.D. 30–78; see Pl. IV. fig. 14). The best-known kings are Kanishka, Huvishka and Vasudeva. The types are interesting, combining deities of the Greeks, Scythians, the Avesta and the Vedas and Buddha. The Greek inscriptions become meaningless after c. A.D. 180. The coinage in gold (of Roman weight) and copper, however, continues probably as late as A.D. 425 in the Kabul valley and the Punjab. Of other dynasties contemporary with the Kushanas, the most important are: (i.) The Andhras, a south Indian power, with territory extending across the peninsula from the Kistna and Godavari deltas to Kolhapur. The coins are chiefly of lead, but copper and silver are also known. (ii.) the satraps of Surāshṭra and Malwa, whose coinage (chiefly of silver) is copied from the half-drachms of the Greek princes of the Punjab; it lasts until the end of the 4th century. (iii.) Early in the 4th century the important imperial Gupta coinage begins with Chandragupta, and continues unbroken to the death of Skandagupta, c. A.D. 480. The empire at its greatest extent comprised the whole of north India, except the Punjab. The earliest gold coinage was derived from that of the Kushanas (see Pl. IV. fig. 15); later there was silver derived from the coinage of the satraps; the copper is more original in style. After c. A.D. 480 the empire broke up into various dynasties which lasted until A.D. 606. The Great Kushanas had been succeeded in Gandhāra (Kabul valley and Punjab) by the Kidāra Kushanas, and these, c. 465–470, were conquered by the Hūṇas (a branch of the Ephthalites or White Huns). The Hūṇa coinage consists almost entirely of imitations of Sassanian, Kushana or Gupta coins. Their power probably broke up c. A.D. 544. Of other ancient and medieval non-Mahommedan coinages in India the following may be mentioned: (1) Various series of dynasties reigning in Kanauj and Delhi, from the 7th to the 12th century. (2) Kashmir—coinage beginning probably as early as Kanishka and continuing with the same types (obverse, king standing, reverse, goddess seated) until the Mahommedan coinage in the 13th century. The coins are very rude; but the succession of the kings from c. A.D. 850 is fairly certain. (3) Later Shāhi coinage of Gandhara, especially the “bull and horseman” coins (c. A.D. 860–950). (4) Pāṇḍya, in the extreme south: this district used first the early punch-marked coins, then coins with a type on one side only, and later double-type coins; these are earlier than c. A.D. 300. There is a later gold coinage (type, fish) from the 7th to 10th century. (5) Cola: an earlier coinage, before c. A.D. 1022, with the Cola emblem, a tiger; the later coinage (obverse, king standing, reverse, king seated) influenced the coinage over most of south India. (6) Ceylon: a coinage of the rajas imitated from the Cola coins, from A.D. 1153 to 1296. (7) Chalukya coinage, chiefly of gold, in west Deccan and in Pallava country between the Kistna and Godavari; the emblem is a boar. They range from the 7th to the 11th century. (8) Vijayanagar: this power preserved the old character of the coinage south of the Kistna long after the Mahommedan conquest had transformed the coinage north of that boundary. The later coinage of South India is too obscure to be dealt with here.
The Arabs in the first days of conquest had subdued Sind and founded an independent state on the banks of the Indus, which was ruled by them for nearly two centuries from 711; but it is hard to subdue India from this direction, and the strangers decayed and disappeared. The way into India was first really opened by the campaigns of Maḥmud of Ghazni (1001–1024) who annexed the Punjab and gave a raja to Gujarat. The Pathan kings came of the Ghuri stock which rose, on the ruins of the empire of Ghazni (1186). Mohammad ibn Sām (d. 1206) made Delhi his capital, and here he and his successors, Pathans or slave-kings, ruled in great splendour as the first exclusively Mahommedan Indian dynasty, latterly rivalled by a line of Pathans of Bengal. Of the Pathans of Delhi (1206–1554) we have an abundant coinage, the principal pieces being the gold mohur of about 168 grains and the silver rupee of about the same weight, besides many pieces of bronze, and at one period of base metal. The coins are large and thick, with the procession of Islam or the style of the caliph on one side, on the other the name and titles of the reigning king. Moḥammad ibn Tughlak (1324–1351, Pl. IV. fig. 8) struck coins with a great variety of inscriptions, some in the name of the shadowy ʽAbbāsid caliphs of Egypt, whose successors were for a time similarly honoured by later sovereigns. Towards the close of the rule of the Pathans several dynasties arose (about 1400) in central and southern India and struck similar money, the kings of Gujarat, of Mālwā and the Bahmanids of the Deccan (1347–1526). The Pathan lines closed with Shēr Shāh, an Afghan, the last ruler of Bengal (d. 1539). Bābar, the Turki, of the family of Timur, seeking a kingdom, adventured (1525) on the conquest of Hindustan; and after long wars with Shēr Shāh, carried on by Bābar’s son Humāyūn, the famous Shāh Akbar, grandson of the invader, was at length peaceably settled on the throne of Delhi, and he and his successors, the so-called Moguls of Delhi, practically subdued the whole of India. They retained the existing standard, but used the Arabic and Persian languages like the shahs of Persia. Akbar (1556–1605) issued a splendid coinage in gold and silver (Pl. IV. fig. 16),
