As previous posts on early, late, and post-Mughal coins have discussed, coinage was a crucial medium with which early modern Central and South Asian states defined themselves and expressed legitimacy. The same is true of one of the most significant successors to Mughal authority in 18^th century northern India: the Durrānī dynasty. Emerging in 1747 under the leadership of Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī (d. 1772/3), this new empire came to control vast territories and circulate great numbers of coins. Like Mughal specimens before them, Durrānī specie extolled the glory of emperors. Minting was also a key component of the dynasty’s foundation narrative. As the empire splintered into smaller units in the 19^th century, local rulers continued to express their power through coins. Moreover, coinage reflected and contributed to Durrānī organization of territory. A close look at examples from the mint at Peshawar suggests how coin inscriptions related to the administrative divisions and territorial claims of the Durrānī state.   

Durrānī coinage and legitimacy

Minting coins has often been identified as a core component of sovereignty among Muslim states. Indeed some colonial authors took this idea rather too far, reducing the essence of sovereignty in Islamic realms to two acts: the inclusion of a ruler’s name in Friday prayers (khuṭba), and on specie. Nevertheless, minting was certainly a crucial act for any kingdom. In the early-20^th century court history of Afghanistan, the Sirāj al-tawārīkh, the Durrānī empire’s foundation is tied to Aḥmad Shāh striking his first coins at his capital, Qandahar. The couplet supposedly inscribed on these is a confident assertion of legitimacy:

“Sovereignty came from the Unparalleled Empowerer to Ahmad Shah, mint coins of silver and gold (as the ruler of) earth and heaven.” (ḥukm shud az qādir-i bī-chūn ba Aḥmad Shāh, sikka zan bar sīm o zar az pusht-i māhī tā ba-māh)

Coin of Ahmad Shah Durrani minted at Peshawar, bearing parts of the couplet ḥukm shud az qādir-i bī-chūn, c. 1747-1772/3.

Under Ahmad Shah and his successors, coins used poetic couplets to shower praise on the Durrānī rulers, emphasizing their supposedly all-encompassing power, justice and wisdom. Although we lack information on the structure and size of Durrānī mints, examples from Iran or India indicate large, well-organized buildings which served as emblems of state power. After protracted civil war in the early 19^th century, the monarchy, traditionally held by Aḥmad Shāh’s Sadōzai clan, was dissolved in 1823. Outside of Herat, which remained in Sadōzai hands, the remaining Durrānī territories were governed by different leaders (sardārs) of the Bārakzai clan. Both clans were part of the larger Durrānī confederation, but the Bārakzai had served as ministers (wazīrs), rather than rulers, by tradition. Reflecting uncertainties about their own legitimacy, the Bārakzai sardārs minted coins, but had to find new vocabulary to justify their position. The ruler of Kabul, Dōst Muḥammad Khān (d. 1863), chose to style himself amīr, or more fully amīr al-mūminīn (commander of the faithful), rather than shāh (king). With a new religious veneer, he struck coins bearing such legends as:

“Amīr Dōst Muḥammad girded his loins and struck coins with the will to wage jihād, may God aid him.” (kamar ba bast o ba-zad sikka ba-‘azm-i jang o jihād amīr Dōst Muḥammad nāṣir-ash ḥaq bād)

Peshawar coins and the ordering of territory

A more focused function of Durrānī coinage was to establish claims to territory, and to enshrine certain administrative divisions. Coins minted in the city of Peshawar, under Sadōzai and later Bārakzai control from 1747 to 1834, provide a good case study for this dynamic. Peshawar was among the wealthiest provinces west of the Indus River, and there are a large number of attested coins from the Peshawar mint.

Coin legends were intrinsically linked to territory through the identification of mints. Peshawar was conquered by Aḥmad Shāh around December 1747, and the earliest specimens from its mint that I know of date to 1748. Hence, minting took place from the outset; from these early coins to the latest Bārakzai ones from 1832, a very regular reverse formula denotes the Peshawar mint. This formula was largely adapted from coins of Awrangzaib, indicating continuity in statecraft between Mughals and Durrānīs. Once the Sikh state of Ranjīt Singh (d. 1839) took over Peshawar in 1834, the phrasing was similarly preserved, working to establish a new claim to the region in familiar terms. Typically the legend is as follows:

“Minted in [the year of] the felicitous human reign, mint of Peshawar” (julūs/fulūs [sana] maimanat mānūs żarb-i Pishāwar/Paishāwar)

Another role of Durrānī coinage was signalling the ordering and hierarchy of territories. Despite Peshawar’s size, wealth and role as a winter residence for the Sadōzai monarchs from the 1770s, its formal place in the administrative system was in many ways secondary. At the largest level, provinces were known as wilāyats; within these were the ḥukūmat-i ‘ālā. Peshawar province belonged to the latter category, as part of the larger province of Punjab. Its use as a winter “capital” does not appear to have produced any formal reordering of this situation. Several Durrānī cities were granted honorific epithets on coinage, but Peshawar was never afforded one. The first capital, Qandahar, or Aḥmadshāhī, was known as “Noblest of Cities” (ashrāf al-bilād). Kabul, which became the capital around 1776, bore the name “Abode of the King” (dār al-mulk); in Punjab, the cities of Multan and Bahawalpur were entitled “Abode of Peace” (dār al-amān) and “Abode of Joy” (dār al-surūr), respectively. Peshawar’s lack of any title nuances our understanding of its position within the Durrānī territorial system. While it was important, it remained a less prestigious, or even subordinate, territory. 

An interesting shift in vocabulary appears to have taken place by the mid-19^th century. Although Peshawar had been out of Durrānī hands for several years, there exist at least two coins minted by amīr Dōst Muḥammad Khān, which claim to be Peshawari. Unlike the old formula, these coins claim to be from “the mint of the Peshawar region” (żarb-i julūs-i ilkā-yi Paishāwar). Dōst Muḥammad expended significant energy to retake Peshawar: he failed to oust the Sikhs in 1835, and briefly occupied the city in 1849 during the Second Anglo-Sikh War before withdrawing to allow British forces to capture it. It is therefore possible that the amīr made use of the term ilkā’s ambiguity to signal his claim to Peshawar. Referring to the “region of Peshawar” allowed him to identify coins minted nearby, perhaps near Jalalabad, as coming from Peshawar. Once again, coins served not just as symbols of legitimacy, but as tools in early modern states’ definitions and reframing of territoriality.

Coin of Ayyūb Shāh (r. 1819-1823 at Peshawar): note the consistency of the reverse legend with the coin of Aḥmad Shāh.

Coin minted during under the Sikh general Hārī Singh Nālwa, c. 1837: note again the consistency in style and reverse text.

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Source List:

Cuhaj, George S. (ed.), Standard Catalog of World Coins 1801-1900, 7^th ed. Iola, WI: Kraus Publications.

Gommans, Jos. The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire c. 1710-1780. Leiden: Brill, 1995.

Katib, Fayz Muhammad. The History of Afghanistan: Fayz Muhammad Katib Hazarah's Siraj Al-Tawarikh Translated by R.D. McChesney and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami.  Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Khera, Paramdip Kaur. Catalogue of Sikh Coins in the British Museum. British Museum Research Publication Number 190. London: The British Museum.

King, L. White. "History and Coinage of the Bārakzai Dynasty of Afghānistān," The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Numismatic Society 16 (1896): 277-344

Noelle-Karimi, Christine. State and Tribe in Nineteenth-century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826-1863). London: Routledge, 1997.

Qadir, Altaf & Fatima Asghar. “Peshawar Valley Under Durrānīs with Focus on its Administration, 1747-1818.” Quarterly Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society Vol. LXIV, no. 1 (2016): 57-66.

Rodgers, C.J. (1885). The Coins of Ahmad Sháh Abdállí or Ahmad Shah Durrání. In Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LIV, No. 1

Whitehead, R.B. (1934) Catalogue of Coins in the Panjab Museum, Lahore, Vol. III – Coins of Nadir Shah and the Durrani Dynasty. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Title Image: Dost Mohammad Khan sitting with three sons, accessed here

Timur Khan is a research Master's student of Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University. His work focuses on statecraft and legitimacy in the Durrani period of Peshawar's history (c. 1747-1834). His research interests include early modern and colonial territoriality, the cultural and political history of Afghans within the Turko-Persianate world, and the role of non-Europeans in the making of 19th-century colonial empires. He tweets @TimurKhan97.