India Princley States? | Mahdist Sudan 2 Qirsh

I did a Numista search but I definitely didn't expect the answer.

Mahdist State of Sudan, 2 qirsh (piastres), 1311 AH (1893/4 AD)
KM# 18, Numista 114521

What an interesting coin!

People interested in history and who also live in what was the British Empire (such as Australia and Canada) may not have heard of the Mahdi and the Mahdist state, but certainly would have heard of General Gordon's murder after the siege of Khartoum and the retaliatory Sudan campaign the British launched to destroy the Mahdist state. Soldiers from all over the Empire, including both Canada and the Australian colonies, fought in that war and many cities and towns here in Australia have streets or a suburb named after General Gordon, and many memorial medals depicting General Gordon were issued.

The Mahdi and his followers were to a large extent the spiritual ancestors of ISIS - fanatical Islamic extremists bent on using violence to expand their newly proclaimed caliphate and utterly intolerant of any heretical non-Mahdist Muslims or any followers of other religions, even to the detriment of political common sense. When Ethiopia (their Orthodox Christian neighbours) sent emissaries to the Mahdi congratulating him on defeating the British and driving out the European colonizers and suggesting an anti-European alliance to help keep the British and other Europeans out of north-east Africa, the Mahdi had the emissaries killed as infidels instead and launched an invasion of Ethiopia. Just stupid.

Descendants of the Mahdi remain influential in the messy anarchy that is modern-day politics in Sudan.