{{Unreferenced, date=May 2019, bot=noref (GreenC bot) The Pysa was a

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...

i coin that was struck in AH1299 (1882) and AH1304 (1887). The obverses of these coins have a pair of

scales Scale or scales may refer to: Mathematics * Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points * Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original * Scale factor, a number w ...

. The name 'Pysa' is derived from the currency units '

Pice Paisa (also transliterated as ''pice'', ''pesa'', ''poysha'', ''poisha'' and ''baisa'') is a monetary unit in several countries. The word is also a generalised idiom for money and wealth. In India, Nepal, and Pakistan, the ''Paisa'' currently equa ...

' and '

Paisa Paisa (also transliterated as ''pice'', ''pesa'', ''poysha'', ''poisha'' and ''baisa'') is a monetary unit in several countries. The word is also a generalised idiom for money and wealth. In India, Nepal, and Pakistan, the ''Paisa'' currently equa ...

'. The AH1299 1 Pysa often turns up in old

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

collections, but the AH1304 coin very seldom turns up. The AH1299 coin was struck at the

Royal Belgian Mint The Royal Mint of Belgium ( French: ''La Monnaie Royale de Belgique''; Dutch: ''De Koninklijke Munt van België'') was responsible for minting all official coins of Kingdom of Belgium from 1832 to 2017. As of 2018 the official legal tender of Be ...

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

while the AH1304 coin was struck at Heaton's Mint,

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. These coins were commissioned by Sultan

Barghash bin Said Sayyid Barghash bin Said al-Busaidi,(1836 – 26 March 1888) ( ar, برغش بن سعيد البوسعيد), was an Omani Sultan and the son of Said bin Sultan, was the second Sultan of Zanzibar. Barghash ruled Zanzibar from 7 October 1870 to 26 ...

ibn Sultan who was, apparently and understandably, upset that his name was written incorrectly on the coins as "Sultan Said ibn Barghash ibn Sultan". It is accompanied by the expression "حفظه الله", "may Allah save him". Note that even one of the Arabic characters was incorrectly written: the "fa" in "حفظه" is written with a dot below (a Maghreb variant) rather than with the dot above as in standard Arabic script.

See also