'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎472] (531/714)

to over Gs.
PERSIA
or 8 ,9. In 1889-90, when I was in Persia, it had sunk at one
moment to I he rise in the price of silver has since raised it
Formerly there was a Government Mint at nearly every big town
in Persia—at Hamadan, Tabriz, Kashan, Isfahan, Kerman, Meshed,
menT'Mmt ^ ermans hah, Eesht, Astrabad, Kum, and in Mazanderan
- mt and Seistan—and the antiquated products of these local
mints are still sometimes encountered. 1 This haphazard system was
a great encouragement to forgery, and there was quite a brisk manu
facture ^of spurious coins, the Government being finally compelled
to call in the whole of the old hammer-struck currency. It was in
18G5 that the reigning Shah, having been persuaded by some
interested individual torecoin the currency on the European system,
instructed his minister at Paris to purchase the necessary machinery
and to engage French engineers. The men duly arrived at Teheran,
but the machinery, the packing-cases of which had already been
consumed as fuel for the steamer that brought it, was deposited
upon the sand at Enzeli, where it lay and rotted, no beasts of
burden being strong enough to carry the big boilers and wheels,
and the Shah's elephant being even found unequal to the task.
I hese misfortunes delayed for some time the execution of the pro
jected scheme ; and it was not till 1877 that the new coinage
appeared, a large building on the northern outskirts of Teheran,
which had been unsuccessfully tried as a cotton factory An East India Company trading post. , having been
converted into the Royal Mint. This establishment, which possesses
a German overseer and French dies, and is under the control of the
Amm-es-feultan, is now the sole mint in Persia.
In my volume of appendices will be found a table of the coins
issued bj the Government Mint. The silver kran is the monetary
Modern unit. Originally it weighed eighty-three grains, then it
was reduced to seventy-seven grains, now it weighs
seventy-one grains. The proportion of fine silver was originally
ninety -fi\ e pei cent. ; that is, the JcTan contained only five per cent,
of alloj . The gold toman 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. also contained the same original proportion
of puie metal viz., ninety-five per cent. Later on this was re
duced in the silver kran to ninety-two per cent., and subsequently
again to ninety per cent., at which figure the ratio now nominally
The old krans remain the basis of the coinage in Persia; and the Imperial
Bank has been compelled to make its notes payable in the old currency, since the
new JiTaus have been at a constant premium.