Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's Coinage: The Emperor Who Minted His Faith
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked about Aurangzeb's wars, his taxes, his letters, even his last will. But there's one thing that touched every single person in his empire — from the richest noble to the poorest peasant — and we haven't really looked at it yet: his coins. Luna: Coins — as in, what people actually handled every day? Lucas: Exactly. And for Aurangzeb, coinage was never just about money. It was a statement of authority, of piety, of how he wanted to be seen. When he came to the throne, Mughal coins traditionally carried the kalima — the Islamic declaration of faith — on one side, and the emperor's name on the other. That had been the practice since Akbar's time, more or less. But Aurangzeb changed all that. Luna: He removed the kalima from the coins? Lucas: Not exactly removed — he replaced it. Starting around 1665, he introduced a new silver rupee that dropped the kalima entirely and instead inscribed his own full imperial title: 'Alamgir, the Conqueror of the World, the Just, the Warrior of the Faith.' It was a radical break. Why? Because the kalima was sacred — putting it on coins meant it could be touched by unclean hands, dropped in the dirt, even used in trade by non-Muslims. Some earlier rulers had worried about that, but Aurangzeb was the first to actually act on it. Luna: So he saw it as a matter of religious propriety? Not just politics? Lucas: Both. The fatawa e alamgiri — his legal code — includes rulings about the proper handling of sacred texts, and coins with the kalima were essentially treated as such. But removing the kalima also let him put his own name front and centre. Every time someone spent a rupee, they saw 'Alamgir' — not just 'the Mughal emperor,' but him personally. It's the same impulse that made him write his own letters and oversee every detail of administration: he wanted his presence felt everywhere. Luna: Were there any objections? I can't imagine everyone was happy about losing the kalima. Lucas: There was pushback, especially from orthodox religious scholars who felt that removing the kalima from coins was itself a kind of disrespect — like erasing God's name from public life. But Aurangzeb had the final say. Interestingly, the change wasn't uniform across the empire. Some mints kept striking older-style coins for years. The Ahmedabad mint, for instance, was notoriously slow to comply. And in the Deccan, where many mints had been newly conquered from the Sultanates, they had their own traditions. Aurangzeb had to gradually enforce his standard. Luna: So the coins become a kind of map of imperial control — where his design was used, and where it wasn't. Lucas: Exactly. And it's not just the design — it's the weight and purity. Aurangzeb was obsessed with standardisation. His silver rupee was supposed to be 11.6 grams of nearly pure silver. But in practice, the quality varied. The Dutch VOC records from Surat complain constantly about debased coinage from certain mints. Aurangzeb tried to crack down, but the empire was so vast that enforcement was patchy. The maasir i alamgiri records several orders to mint officials — the dhaka — to maintain standards, but corruption was rampant. Luna: Speaking of which — I'm curious, because you often talk about these details without any ads interrupting. How do you keep the show going without pushing products? Lucas: Yeah, it's a choice. We deliberately don't run ads on Fexingo History — no sponsors, no commercials. The idea is that you can just listen without being sold to. If people want to support that, there's a link: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's not a big deal, just a way to keep it clean. Luna: I like that. No interruption, just history. So back to the coins — did the design change under his successors? Lucas: It did. When Bahadur Shah took over after Aurangzeb's death, he briefly restored the kalima to the coinage. But the Alamgiri rupee remained in circulation for decades — it was so trusted for its silver content, at least in theory, that merchants kept using it. Even after the empire declined, those coins were still accepted in markets across North India and the Deccan. Luna: So Aurangzeb's coin outlived his empire. Lucas: In a way, yes. And that's fitting, because he saw coinage as a legacy. He even wrote letters about it — the ruqaat i alamgiri includes instructions to mint officials about the proper inscriptions. He wanted his name to circulate long after he was gone. And it did — literally, in people's pockets. Luna: Were there any other symbols on his coins besides his titles? Lucas: Some mints added mint marks — a flower, a star, a fish — to identify where they were struck. The Aurangabad mint, for example, used a small trident-like symbol, which is interesting because Aurangabad was in the Deccan, a region with strong Maratha and Hindu traditions. But the main feature was always the inscription: 'The Sultan of the World, the Deputy of God, Alamgir.' That was the message. Luna: It's almost like he's competing with God for top billing. Lucas: Well, careful — he was deeply pious. But there's no doubt he saw himself as God's representative on earth. The coins just made that explicit. And that's the tension at the heart of his reign: the same man who compiled the fatawa e alamgiri to enforce Islamic law also put his own name above the kalima on the empire's currency. Luna: I never thought of coins as a window into ideology like that. Lucas: They're one of the best sources we have, actually. Coins survive in huge numbers — there are hoards of Alamgiri rupees still being found today — and they tell us what the state wanted people to see every day. For a ruler like Aurangzeb, who was so concerned with his image and his legacy, the coinage is a direct line to his intentions. Luna: So if someone finds an Alamgiri rupee in a field, what does it look like? Lucas: It's a thin silver disc, about the size of a modern British pound coin, but lighter. On one side, in Persian script, it says: 'The Emperor Alamgir, may his kingdom last forever.' On the other, the date and the mint name. No images — Islamic coinage avoided portraits. Just calligraphy, often beautifully executed. Some of them are real works of art. Luna: And they were struck in dozens of mints across the empire? Lucas: Over 80 mints during his reign, from Kabul to Dhaka, from Kashmir to the Deccan. Each one had a die cutter who would engrave the emperor's name in the local style. So you get subtle variations in the script — a Persianised hand in the north, a more angular style in the south. It's a huge dataset for historians. Luna: Did the Deccan mints, like the ones captured from Bijapur and Golconda, keep any of their old designs? Lucas: For a short time, yes. The Qutb Shahi coins of Golconda had featured the names of the twelve Shia imams, which Aurangzeb obviously couldn't tolerate. So those were quickly replaced. But the transition wasn't instant — it took a few years for all the dies to be recut. And some mints in the Deccan continued to strike slightly lighter rupees, which caused problems for trade. Luna: So the coins also show the friction of empire — the gap between policy and reality. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the story of Aurangzeb's entire reign, isn't it? Grand ambitions, meticulous plans, but the empire was just too big and too diverse to control perfectly. The coins are a microcosm of that. They bear his name, but they don't always bear his weight. Luna: That's a great way to put it.