Muntakhab al-tawarikh 43.1.2

43.1.2

This state of affairs also led to a diminution of the public funds. Among other sources of loss to the treasury was this that the Sultan enacted that the muhar of copper should become current on an equal footing with the muhar of silver, and any one who shewed reluctance to receive it used to be instantly punished severely. This enactment led to many corrupt practices in the kingdom as a matter of course, and unscrupulous and contumacious rascals used everywhere in their own houses to set up mints and stamp coins, and taking them into the cities used to purchase with them silver and horses, weapons and fine things, and thus rose to great wealth and dignity. But inasmuch as copper had no value as a currency in places at a distance and one tanka of gold rose to the value of fifty or sixty copper coins, the Sultan perceived the worthlessness of the copper coinage, and issued an edict to the effect that every one who had in his house a copper tanka should, if he brought them to the public treasury, receive for them golden tankas in equal value. The people profited greatly by this arrangement, till at last copper became copper and silver silver, and those copper tankas were lying in heaps in Tughlaqabad as late as the time of Sultan Mubarak Shah according to the author of the Tarikh-i-Alfi, and had no more value than stones. God knows the truth.