The Coins of the Indian Sultanates: Covering the Area of Present-Day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

The coinage of the Indian Sultanates is a very important primary source for helping us understand the political and economic history of much of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from the beginning of the thirteenth century AD until the seventeenth century when the last of the sultanates was absorbed into the Mughal empire. The right of sikka, i.e., the right to strike coins, was one of the two jurdically recognised expressions of the right of the ruler to sovereignty, and it was a right that was jealously guarded.