Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History
Aurangzeb's Deccan Currency: The Copper Coins That Bankrupted an Empire
From 1682 to 1707, Aurangzeb fought a grinding war in the Deccan that drained the Mughal treasury. To pay his massive army, he minted millions of copper dams — but the silver and gold coins that once fueled Mughal trade vanished from circulation. This episode unpacks how the emperor's monetary policy, specifically the explosion of copper coinage and the debasement of silver rupees, destabilized the empire's economy. We follow the journey of a single copper dam from the mint at Shahjahanabad to the hands of a Maratha soldier, and we explore the economic logic — or illogic — behind…
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