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