48 The Initial Coinage of Bengal. [No. 1, 



Type as usual. 



Obv. Rev. 



Margin, (remainder illegible) — h'^^j^ 



IV.— BAHADUR SHAH. 



The single point in the biography of Bahadur Shah, which remains 

 at all obscure, is the date of his first attaining power. Ibn Batutah 

 records with sufficient distinctness, that he conquered and set aside 

 his regnant brother Shahdb-ud-din, sometime prior to Grhias-ud-din 

 Tughlak's reassertion of the ancient suzerainty of Dehli over the 

 lightly-held allegiance of Bengal, and his eventual carrying away 

 captive the offending Bahadur, who was, however, soon to be released, 

 and restored with added honours,* by Muhammad bin Tughlak, 

 almost immediately on his own accession. Indian home-authors, who 

 so rarely refer to the affairs of the Grangetic delta, give vague intima- 

 tions of the first appointment of Bahadur to Eastern Bengal by 'Ala- 

 ud-din Muhammad in a. h. 799,f assigning to him an inconceivable 

 interval of placid repose until a. h. 717, when he is stated to have 

 broken out into the turbulent self-assertion for which he was after- 

 wards so celebrated. 



The two statements are certainly at variance, but Ibn Batutah's 

 is the most readily reconcilable with probabilities, and the demands 

 of the up to this time legible dates on the coins which Bahadur put 

 into circulation in Bengal. I might have some doubt as to the 

 conclusiveness of the reading of the date 710 on his money in the 

 Kooch Bahar trouvaille, but I have none as to the clear expression 

 of a.h. 711 and 712, though the singular break occurring between 

 712 (or 714) and 720 suggests a suspicion of an originally imperfect 



jj A^| ^ c^aAj jjjj! l^Uj \) tjd£ jli-* jaltf ^(kL. ^a. * 



Tabakafc-i-Akbari. &\& j! ^Uij jd jk£x» d}> *i\yL j± &&* 



See also Zia-i-Barni, printed edit. p. 461. 

 t Stewart, p. 75. Ferishtah (Briggs) i. 406. 



