10 Shahi – Iran

In 1742, Iran was under the rule of Nader Shah Afshar, a military genius whose reign (1736-1747) was marked by constant warfare and profound economic strain. The currency situation was a direct reflection of this turbulent period. The monetary system was based on the silver abbasi and the gold toman (a unit of account worth 10,000 dinars), but the state's primary focus was on financing Nader Shah's ambitious military campaigns, including his costly invasions of India, Dagestan, and the Ottoman Empire. While his 1739 sack of Delhi had yielded staggering loot, including the famed Koh-i-Noor diamond and millions of rupees, this wealth was largely hoarded for the state treasury or distributed to the army, rather than being systematically injected into the economy to stabilize the currency.

The continuous warfare led to severe debasement of the coinage. To pay for his massive standing army, Nader Shah increasingly resorted to reducing the silver content in coins minted across the empire, such as the abbasi and the shahi. This practice, combined with the erratic collection of heavy taxes often levied years in advance, caused significant inflation and a loss of public confidence in the currency. The economy remained predominantly agrarian, and the brutal tax burdens, collected with often extreme coercion, crippled the peasantry and disrupted agricultural production, further undermining the real value of the circulating money.

Furthermore, Nader Shah's centralization efforts and attempts to control trade routes created additional monetary disruptions. His policies, including granting trade monopolies to the state and attempting to shift religious focus to reduce clerical power, introduced uncertainty into commercial markets. By 1742, the financial system was under immense pressure, with a growing disconnect between the official coinage and its actual purchasing power. This precarious currency situation was a key symptom of the wider administrative and economic exhaustion that would ultimately contribute to the instability and fragmentation of the empire following Nader Shah's assassination in 1747.