Portuguese Estado da Índia xerafim

The xerafim (also xerafin or ashrafi), a silver coinage struck at the Portuguese Goa mint from 1510 until decimalisation in 1958, with the pardao gold piece and the tanga copper rounding out the system. The obverse carried the arms of Portugal; the reverse the legend 'S. Thomas' and later João of Portugal in Roman letters. The Goa mint ran continuously from Afonso de Albuquerque's capture of the city until the Indian liberation of 1961 — the longest-running European mint in India. The xerafim circulated across the western Indian Ocean littoral and set the exchange reference against the Mughal rupee and the Dutch florin.