Monday, August 24, 2009
Rare Mughal Coin Discovered in Kashmir
(Unfortunately, no photographs of the coin were available and I couldn't find any during a quick search)
Mughal Emperor's Kashmir coin discovered
Irfan Naveed
Srinagar: A British archaeologist has claimed to have discovered the zodiac ‘mohur’ (coin) of Mughal emperor Noor-ud Din Jahangir (1569-1627), which he is believed to have struck from Kashmir mint in the name of his queen Noor Jahan during his rule.
The ‘mohur’ in pure gold bears on the obverse the zodiac sign of Cancer (the crab) � the 4th sign among twelve zodiac signs. The other side of the coin carries the name of the Queen Noor Jahan in Persian letters.
The coin is dated to AH 1034 which stands the 20th year of Jahangir’s rule.
The British archaeologist N G Rhods in an article published in the ‘Numismatic Chronicle’ has claimed to have discovered this single piece of such gold coin from the British coin collections.
In his article, the expert writes zodiacal coins of Jahangir of the mints other than from Ahmedabad and Agra are of great rarity. Therefore, writes Rhods, “it gives me great pleasure to find here a gold ‘mohur’ with the sign of Cancer struck at the Kashmir mint, with the name of Queen Nurjahan.”
This very same specimen was also illustrated earlier by J. Gibbs and passed from Gibbs to the da Cunnha coin collection, and was then sold to one, Hatfield.
The illustration in Gibbs’ article is very poor; as he had attributed it to Ajmer, although it was correctly attributed to Kashmir by da Cunha.
After its sale to Hatfield, the coin was not available to numismatists, and R B Whitehead was not able to find a photograph of it to illustrate his definitive article on zodiacal coins in 1931.
S H Hodivala, who discusses this coin in his 1929 articles never saw a readable illustration of the coin, and was forced to rely on the correspondence between month and date, and the fact that Jahangir was in Kashmir at this time to support its attribution to Kashmir rather than Ajmer.
Noor-ud-Din Jahangir has also issued other types of coins from Kashmir but this coin has been extremely rare.
It is in place to mention that most of rare coins of Kashmir are found in the foreign coin collections of the world and not a single gold coin of Jahangir is presently found in Kashmir. ges]Posted on 24 Aug 2009 by Webmaster
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5 comments:
Hi Patricia,
Thanks! I visited the forextradin-g website - day trading currencies. Whew! Dangerous stuff. I'll stick to the penny slot machines and Petrobras :)
...caveat emptor on this coin, lack
of a picture means the fakirs are
drumming up a market for their
less authentic efforts. interesting that the 4th sign, cancer, is on the coin as that is
the money quadrant in the tonalamatl, the grain/diamond suit
which occupys 65days of the 260d
cycle.
i have a black weaving whorl
which has five dots, and then 4 dots,
both separated by 2 lines either side,
to give 9=atl, the shuttle/xiotl
throw, 5=coatl/macui, the snakehand, and, 4=naui, the 4-sided
nature of weaving. the bottom is
embossed with dots 9, and, 10,
opposite each other, and separating
them two hemi-cycles enclosed with
15 dots=cuauthli/eagle, and what
looks like, 11 dots=ozomatli/monkey
inside the other, which may be the
name of the weaver=macui cuautli=
5 eagle, also the sign of the goddess, xochiquetzal/flowerfeather.
the 9 and 10 dots=atl, and itzcuintli=10=mama(quechua/inca)=
master weaver.
i mention this because it is quite possible that coins began
as weaving whorls, they of course
have holes in them as the chinese
coins used to, perhaps another
clue as to their origin.
Hola, Carlos!
Wow - thank you for bringing me back to reality. I only just realized today (this morning, in fact), that "Patricia's" seeming complimentary post was actually an advertisement for a website. I did not realize this at first, since her post linked to a day-trader website, not a gambling website, as such messages typically do. However, this morning, I received another message from a different person, under a different blog post here, that was identical to "Patricia's" and it was then I realized it was just a bogus post.
Like the potential bogus money you said of which one must be leary!
Well, I deleted the bogus post. It is not so easy to do that with bogus coins!
It was not too long ago that Bollywood came out with a movie that, if I am not mistaken, covered the life of one of the people named in the post about the Mughal coin: Queen Jain. Perhaps this coin is a fraud, attempting to "cash in" on increased interest in this Queen.
Or maybe not. I will never know, unless there is some great future expose in the Indian press.
Your words of caution, however, are duly noted. Thus, I left my reply to the bogus "Patricia" intact, as a warning.
I have always wondered about the holes in early coins. I thought it was so that the owners of the coins could wear their wealth on a chain about their necks, thereby keeping it within plain sight of all others as a demonstration of wealth, and within plain sight of the owner at all times (except when asleep) if that was all the wealth one had.
Of course, gold coins back then were worth a lot more than today, because people actually cut off bits of them to pay for things. That no longer happens today. Now gold coins are traded as commodities, totally unrelated to the cost of what it actually takes to buy food, liquor, clothes, and shelter.
...the holes in coins are for that too, trading beads are older. i
have a small necklace that seems
to have been used for counters,
they are graduated in size, well-
worn indicating they had been
handled off the string they are
presently on and moved from one necklace to another.
we are the 4th planet out, including the sun,
the grain/diamond cuadrant, the
number for money=4=naui because
it navigates. it may be the
number for xilonen/nenetl=baby
corn goddess, but for no other god or goddess, except ueuecoyotl/old coyote
and he's busy on the border
passing wetbacks.
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