Coinage of Nader Shah Afshar

Who was Nader Shah?

Born about 1688 into the Afshar, a Turkoman tribe of Khorasan, Nader rose as a military commander in the chaos that followed the Afghan capture of Isfahan in 1722. He restored the Safavid claimant Tahmasp II, then deposed him, and in 1736 had himself crowned on the Moghan plain — ending two centuries of Safavid rule.

His reign is defined by campaigning: Ottoman Iraq and the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and above all the invasion of Mughal India. The Delhi expedition of 1739 brought back the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor, and briefly made Iran the richest treasury in Asia. He was assassinated by his own officers in 1747, and his empire dissolved within a decade.

The coinage of Nader Shah

Nader's standard silver denomination is the rupee of roughly 11.4 g, adopted from the Mughal standard he had just conquered, alongside the older abbasi and its fractions. Gold mohurs were struck sparingly, mostly from Indian plunder, and copper falus circulated locally.

The great break with Safavid practice is religious: Nader dropped the Shi'a formula naming the Twelve Imams and the phrase 'Ali wali Allah' from his coins, replacing it with a neutral couplet. The best-known reads, in Persian verse, that the coin was struck on gold and silver 'from the moon to the fish' by the king who is the lord of the conjunction — a claim to universal sovereignty rather than sectarian legitimacy.

Mints include Tabriz, Isfahan, Mashhad, Qazvin, Rasht, Herat, Kabul, Peshawar, Lahore and Shahjahanabad (Delhi). Indian-mint Nader rupees are common; Iranian gold is genuinely rare.

How to identify and date a Nader Shah coin

Look first for the couplet and the absence of the Shi'a kalima — that combination alone separates Nader from both Safavid and later Qajar silver. The mint name and AH date sit in the reverse field or margin; regnal years 1148–1160 AH correspond to 1736–1747 CE.

Weight is the second check: a full rupee should sit close to 11.0–11.6 g, an abbasi near 4.6 g. Anything markedly light is clipped, worn, or a contemporary imitation — Indian mints continued striking in Nader's name after his death, so a late date does not always mean a lifetime issue.

Collecting notes

Silver rupees of the Indian mints are the accessible entry point and turn up regularly in commerce. Iranian-mint silver in sharp grade is scarcer, and gold mohurs — especially from Mashhad or the Delhi issue of 1739 — are the trophy pieces of the series. Value tracks mint rarity and legible dates far more than eye appeal.