Five years on the throne, and Sher Shah left India the rupee
Sher Shah Suri ruled northern India for barely five years, from 1540 to 1545, after chasing the Mughals out. In that time he issued the first rupiya coin, organised a postal network and stretched the Grand Trunk Road from Chittagong to Kabul. Akbar, the greatest Mughal, later built on his foundations.
He was born Farid Khan in Sasaram, in present-day Bihar, sometime between 1472 and 1486, into a Pashtun family from the Sur clan. His grandfather had come from Afghanistan as a horse trader and become a landholder. Mistreated by a stepmother while his father failed to intervene, the boy left home and studied history and religion in Jaunpur. His title Sher, meaning lion or tiger, reportedly came from killing a tiger that sprang at the governor of Bihar.
His talent first showed in 1497, when his father handed him the family estates to manage. He cracked down on corruption, assessed land revenue carefully and set fixed commissions for tax collectors, and the district prospered. Family intrigue pushed him out for a while, and in Agra he watched Babur, the first Mughal emperor, at close quarters. Entering service in Bihar, he was effectively running the kingdom by 1530.
His chance came in 1538. While the Mughal emperor Humayun was busy elsewhere, Sher Shah overran the Bengal Sultanate, then defeated the Mughals, drove them out of India and made Delhi his capital. He went on to conquer Punjab, Malwa, Marwar, Mewar and Bundelkhand, earning a reputation as one of the ablest Afghan commanders in history and gaining the title Sultan Adil, the Just King.
His building and administrative work outlasted him. He enlarged Humayun's city of Dina-panah as Shergarh and revived ancient Pataliputra, in decline since the 7th century, as Patna. He died in May 1545 while besieging the fort of Kalinjar. Civil war followed, and the Mughals eventually returned, but they inherited much of the system he had built.
Source: Sher Shah Suri
