Inscriptions on both sides: Al-sultan al-halim al-karim ala al-dunya wa'l din / Abu'l muzzafar mahmud shah khalji, mint name in margin. Dated to 871 AH = 1466 AD. 19mmx21mm, 10.41 grams. Hadrat Shadiabad mint. Rajgor 3055; "The Coin of the Indian Sultanates" M32; HNW 13.
Very nice for these, thick and heavy coin, made out of decent silver.
Malwa is a region of central India, lying in the western part of Madhya Pradesh state. From the mid-tenth century, Malwa was ruled by the Paramara clan of Rajputs, who established a capital at Dhar. King Bhoj, who ruled from about 1010 to 1060, was known as the great polymath philosopher-king of medieval India; his extensive writings cover philosophy, poetry, medicine, veterinary science, phonetics, yoga, and archery. Under his rule, Malwa became an intellectual center of India. Bhoj also founded the city of Bhopal to secure the eastern part of his kingdom. His successors ruled until about 1200, when Malwa was conquered by the Delhi Sultanate.The sacking of Delhi by the Mongol conqueror Timur in the early fifteenth century caused the breakup of the sultanate into smaller states, and in 1401 Dilawar Khan, previously Malwa's governor under the rule of Delhi, declared himself sultan of Malwa. He established a capital at Mandu, high in the Vindhya Range, overlooking the Narmada River valley. His son and successor Hoshang Shah (1405-1435) embellished Mandu. Hoshang Shah's son Ghazni Khan ruled for only a year, and was suceeded by Sultan Mahmud Khalji (1436-1469), first of the Khalji sultans of Malwa, who expanded the state to include portions of Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the Deccan. The Muslim sultans invited Rajputs to settle in the country. In the early 1500's the sultan sought the aid of the sultans of Gujarat to counter the growing power of the Rajputs, while the Rajputs sought the aid of the Sesodia Rajput kings of Mewar. Gujarat stormed Mandu in 1518 and 1531, and shortly thereafter the Malwa sultanate collapsed. The Mughal emperor Akbar captured Malwa in 1562, and made it a province of his empire. Mandu was abandoned by the seventeenth century.
