1S60.] Asiatic Sovereigns and Paper Currency. 191 



measure and implore heaven to send them aid; and loud were their 

 curses against Izz-ud-din and those who were his partners in the 

 scheme. 



" At last with common consent they attacked him, and, having killed 

 him with his followers, hroke out into rebellion. All the movements 

 of the caravans were stopped in that district ; and robbers and law- 

 less men lay in wait in the streets and gardens, and if any poor 

 wretch by dint of a hundred stratagems had managed to get a little 

 corn or a bag of fruit, they took it away from him, and if he 

 attempted to resist, they said to him " take these ' auspicious chaus' 

 then in exchange." At length when the matter became really 

 serious and the knife, as it were, touched the bone, all the doors of 

 business were closed and the imperial revenue seemed abolished. The 

 nobles and amirs with the Chancellor of the Exchequer then went to 

 the king, and represented to him that the institution of chaus had 

 produced ruin to the subject and emptiness to the imperial treasury, 

 and if this state of things continued many days longer, the glory 

 of the empire would pass away, and no subjects be left in the realm. 

 The Sultan, having heard the words of these faithful counsellors, 

 issued orders for cancelling the chaus, and, the inhabitants conse- 

 quently returning to their homes, in a short time the city and bazar 

 of Tabriz resumed their original appearance." 



Short lived, however, as this measure appears to have been, its 

 consequences were not so transitory ; for it brought speedy ruin on 

 the unfortunate monarch, who had been thus duped by his minister's 

 golden promises. A few months afterwards, a rebellion is raised by 

 the nobles, and Ky Khatu, after a brief struggle, is dethroned and 

 put to death. 



But ill-fated as the measure had proved in Persia, the scheme of 

 transferring all the gold and silver of the kingdom into the imperial 

 coffers without the loss being felt by the subjects, was too tempting 

 to the ignorant mind of an oriental despot, to be at once abandoned. 

 We never hear of it again in Persia, but in the next century we find 

 it attempted in India by that strange mixture of the grandest and 

 the basest of Imperial qualities, the Sultan Muhammad Toghluk of 

 Dehli (1325 — 1351). Although in this case copper, not paper, was 

 adopted, still as Ferishta expressly tells us that it was done in imita- 



2 c 2 



