Historical coins gather dust at Nizam's museum in Hyderabad

Hyderabad, July 14 : The State managed Nizam's Museum here is the second largest custodian of prized coins in the world. But the museum's precious possession-the coins--are stated to be not being properly taken care of due to local authorities' negligence and government's apathy.

If a historian-cum-numismatist Mohammed Safiullah, 42, is to be believed, he feels sad at the kind of apathy being shown to the historically significant coins kept here.

Safiullah developed a liking for coin collection when he was a teenager and over the last three decades, he has a raised a considerable collection of coins.

Hyderabad is amongst those cities, which has a history related to coins. Within 12 years of its founding, the city started minting coins in 1603 A.D. And, these coins had been the symbol of prosperity and wealth for the Nizam of Hyderabad.

"Coins tell a lot of things about different rulers. We have lots of coins, some of the rulers of Bahami dynasty that existed in this region for a few weeks. But they issued coins to commemorate their rule. Except for coins there was no other fact to prove that they had ruled. We can know about the religious beliefs of different rulers and the metal content of these coins which would also tell us the relative prosperity of the people of that time," said Mohammed Safiullah, the historian.

In the context, Nizam's museum, which today boasts of 13,000 coins in Hyderabad, holds a great significance.

Safiullah is utterly disappointed to see the apathy of the authorities here. He says the state of the priceless coins in the custody of this State-run museum is quite pathetic.

He blames the disinterest of government authorities and poor publicity for the State of affairs.

"The State Museum at the Public Gardens in Hyderabad has the second largest collection of the coins in the world, especially the Indian coins. I think there could be over 500,000 to 600,000 coins and the government needs to take slightly more interest. Definitely it is in safe hands. But it needs to take little more interest and display some coins in galleries. I am sure it would prove to be a crow-puller because you can't find 13,000 plus gold coins at one place," said Mohammed Safiullah." By Narendra

ANI