Earliest East India Company Mohur from Patna

CNG 85, Lot: 1369. Estimate $15000. Sold for $11000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

INDIA, Colonial. British India. Bengal Presidency. 1651-1835. AV Mohur (19mm, 11.06 g, 10h). Azimabad (Patna) mint. Dated RY 10 of Shah Alam II (AD 1768/9). Poetic couplet citing name and titles of Shah Alam II; “sayye fazle elah” in couplet / Mint formula and RY date; trisul mintmark to left. Cf. Pridmore 108 (rupee); cf. Friedberg 1533 (eighth mohur); otherwise, unpublished. EF. Earliest and first known mohur struck at this mint following its takeover by the East India Company.

The East India Company found it difficult to coin bullion in India for its own local use. According to Pridmore (p. 183), until at least 1757, the Company could only do so at the Mughal mints controlled by the Nawab of Bengal, the provincial governor/viceroy of the Mughal emperor, where it was struck into Mughal types. The principal mint used by the Company was Akbarnagar (mod. Rajmahal), but more were employed as the Company expanded further into Bengal. This complex process, in addition to the requirement of paying mintage fees to the nawab, was indicative of the larger problem facing the East India Company: the lack of independent authority over and control of Company interests in India. Under Robert Clive (1725-1774), Company supremacy was established in Bengal and Southern India. In 1757, he retook Calcutta, which had been seized the previous year by the new Nawab of Bengal, Siraj al-Daulah. Shortly thereafter, the Nawab himself was defeated at Palashi. British military supremacy in Bengal was established and a new puppet Nawab, Mir Jafar, was installed. Seven years later, in 1764 at Buxar, Sir Hector Munro defeated the combined forces of Mir Jafar’s successor as Nawab, Mir Qasim, along with the Nawab of Awadh, Shuja al-Daula, and the Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II, giving the East India Company the real political power it wanted. Under the terms of the Treaty of Allahabad, in return for restoring Shuja al-Daula as Nawab of Awadh and providing Allahabad as a safe haven for the Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II granted the East India Company the right to collect revenue (diwani) for Bengal, Bihar (which included Azimabad), and Orissa - a revenue which amounted to about 2.6 million rupees annually. Between this point and 1771, when the Company abolished the existing process of striking coins and established a standard coinage emanating from the mint at Calcutta, this mohur was struck - one of the few under the old system and ironically from the very city to where Shah Alam had been escorted by the British following his defeat at Buxar.