40 Para - Mahmud II type B

Tripoli's billon coinage of this period reflects the Regency's awkward dual loyalty — nominally Ottoman, practically autonomous under the Karamanli dynasty. By 1808, Yusuf Karamanli had consolidated his rule after a brutal succession struggle that included the murder of one brother and the exile of another, and the Regency was simultaneously prosecuting its war against the United States, which would end inconclusively in 1805 — three years before this coin was struck. The billon alloy itself signals chronic silver shortages that plagued North African minting throughout the early nineteenth century.