{"book":"adl0957","page":343,"text":"280\n\nAPPENDIX IV\n\nBanking & Currency\n\nThe remodelling of the currency in 1927 introduced the Afghani as the unit of the monetary system, as distinct from the old coin, Kabuli. An Afghani is a silver piece, weighing 10 Grams, 90 being fine. It is divided into 100 puls. The 50 puls pieces, called Kirans, are now mostly of nickel. Smaller pieces of 25 puls, 10 puls, and 5 puls are also used. Paper currency was introduced in 1936, and since then has proved to be extremely popular.\n\nBefore the reign of King Mohammed Nadir Shah Afghanistan had no bank of its own, and the currency and other banking business were carried on by private bankers and moneylenders, mostly foreigners. There were no firms or trading concerns in the country : each trader used to take his goods on his own responsibility to foreign markets and dispose of them at the price ruling on the day or at the price offered. Being always short of funds and in a hurry to go back, he could not wait for better opportunities to sell his merchandise. Usually the foreign traders or business companies which were fully aware of his shortcomings and financial difficulties would join hands against him, making him accept the price offered, however low it might be.\n\nRepresentatives of foreign firms would enter Afghanistan and offer money in advance to local producers on condition that they would sell their goods to them alone at the stipulated prices, which were usually far below the market rates. The Government could not interfere, for they themselves had bound their hands by formal agreements and legal contracts. Moreover the Government had no control over foreign exchange and","chars":1649,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00343.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/343","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/343","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}