Place · tomb & historic town · India
Sasaram
Also known as Sher Shah Suri’s silver rupiya, rupiya
The town on the Grand Trunk Road in Rohtas district, Bihar, 150 kilometres southwest of Patna, holding the 1545 tomb of Sher Shah Suri (1486-1545) — the Afghan noble whose five-year reign (1540-1545) rebuilt the Grand Trunk Road, introduced the standardised silver rupee (still the basis of the Indian currency unit), reformed the revenue system around measured land assessment, and established the postal relay system the Mughals inherited. Sher Shah died fighting at Kalinjar in 1545; his tomb at Sasaram is the finest surviving Afghan-period Indian mausoleum, a 46-metre red sandstone octagonal tomb on a 300-foot square plinth in the middle of a 1,000-foot artificial tank. The tomb design directly influenced the Humayun's Tomb (1572) template. ASI protection since 1897. The city still sits on the modern NH19 that follows Sher Shah's Grand Trunk Road.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Tradition
- Sher Shah Suri and Grand Trunk Road history
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.950, 84.010
Worth knowing
Sher Shāh, whose tomb stands here, minted the silver rupiya whose name and weight the rupee still carries.
Connections (7)
- Power passed toChausa
Sher Shah Suri beat Humayun at Chausa in 1539 and Kannauj in 1540 and drove him out of India for fifteen years, and in five years of rule produced the Bengal-to-Indus highway with its sarais, the silver rupiya and a revenue survey based on measured yield — all of which the Mughals took over wholesale when they came back. His own tomb rises on an island in a tank at Sasaram, on the road he built and near the country he came from.
- CampaignKālinjar Fort
Sher Shah Suri was killed at Kalinjar in May 1545 when a rocket he was directing against the wall burst among his own stores. He had ruled five years, rebuilt the Grand Trunk Road, introduced the silver rupiya and reorganised the revenue on measured yield; his tomb at Sasaram stands on the road he built. His successors lost the empire within a decade, and the Mughals came back and inherited all three of his reforms.
- Institutional successionAgra Fort
Akbar's currency is Sher Shah's rupiya with better quality control. The weight standard, the silver-to-copper ratio, the practice of naming the mint on the coin and the cash revenue assessment that gave the coin something to do were all in place before the Mughals returned in 1555. Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari describes the mint procedure in detail and does not mention where it came from.
- PrecursorQutb complex, Delhi
Iltutmish's silver tanka of about 175 grains and Sher Shah's rupiya of about 178 are effectively the same coin three hundred years apart, and the word rupee, from rupya, silver, replaced a word that survives as the Bangladeshi taka. The continuity is not rhetorical: merchants and revenue officers would not accept a change in the weight they assessed in.
- Institutional successionRaja Todar Mal
Todar Mal had served in the Sur administration before he served Akbar's, and the zabt settlement is Sher Shah's surveyed cash revenue carried out at imperial scale with ten-year price averages added. The system that the Mughals are credited with, and that the Company then inherited in Bengal, is traceable through one official's career back to a five-year Afghan reign.
- Buried atSher Shah Suri
Sher Shah Suri's tomb at Sasaram is an octagonal sandstone mausoleum rising a hundred feet on an artificial island in a square tank, designed in his lifetime and finished after his death. The building is the architectural precedent for Humayun's Tomb at Delhi (completed 1572), and Sasaram's placement on the Grand Trunk Road ensured every traveller between Bengal and Delhi passed it — the king, the road and the tomb are one design.
- Patron ofSher Shāh's silver rupiya
Sher Shāh Sūrī's five-year reign (1540-45) was long enough to reform the land revenue, build the great trunk road from Chittagong to Peshawar, and fix the silver rupiya at 11.53 grams of 97.5% silver — a standard that the Mughals, the East India Company and the Reserve Bank of India all inherited unchanged. He is buried in a tank at Sasaram.
On these journeys
- The Grand Trunk Road — Kabul to Chittagong
- Overland corridors
- Rise and crisis of the Mughal state
- Coinage & mint networks — karshāpaṇa to the rupee
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sasaram”. Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India Prior to Steam Locomotion.
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