Two notable and disastrous attempts to imitate the Chinese system of currency took place in the Middle Ages; one of them in Persia, apparently in Polo’s very presence, the other in India some 36 years later.

The first was initiated in 1294 by the worthless Kaikhatu Khan, when his own and his ministers’ extravagance had emptied the Treasury, on the suggestion of a financial officer called ’Izzuddin Muzaffar.  The notes were direct copies of Kublai’s, even the Chinese characters being imitated as part of the device upon them.[5] The Chinese name Chao was applied to them, and the Mongol Resident at Tabriz, Pulad Chingsang, was consulted in carrying out the measure.  Expensive preparations were made for this object; offices called Chao-Khanahs were erected in the principal cities of the provinces, and a numerous staff appointed to carry out the details.  Ghazan Khan in Khorasan, however, would have none of it, and refused to allow any of these preparations to be made within his government.  After the constrained use of the Chao for two or three days Tabriz was in an uproar; the markets were closed; the people rose and murdered ’Izzuddin; and the whole project had to be abandoned.  Marco was in Persia at this time, or just before, and Sir John Malcolm not unnaturally suggests that he might have had something to do with the scheme; a suggestion which excites a needless commotion in the breast of M. Pauthier.  We may draw from the story the somewhat notable conclusion that Block-printing was practised, at least for this one purpose, at Tabriz in 1294.

The other like enterprise was that of Sultan Mahomed Tughlak of Delhi, in 1330-31.  This also was undertaken for like reasons, and was in professed imitation of the Chao of Cathay.  Mahomed, however, used copper tokens instead of paper; the copper being made apparently of equal weight to the gold or silver coin which it represented.  The system seems to have had a little more vogue than at Tabriz, but was speedily brought to an end by the ease with which forgeries on an enormous scale were practised.  The Sultan, in hopes of reviving the credit of his currency, ordered that every one bringing copper tokens to the Treasury should have them cashed in gold or silver.  “The people who in despair had flung aside their copper coins like stones and bricks in their houses, all rushed to the Treasury and exchanged them for gold and silver.  In this way the Treasury soon became empty, but the copper coins had as little circulation as ever, and a very grievous blow was given to the State.”

An odd issue of currency, not of paper, but of leather, took place in Italy a few years before Polo’s birth.  The Emperor Frederic II., at the siege of Faenza in 1241, being in great straits for money, issued pieces of leather stamped with the mark of his mint at the value of his Golden Augustals.  This leather coinage was very popular, especially at Florence, and it was afterwards honourably redeemed by Frederic’s Treasury.  Popular tradition in Sicily reproaches William the Bad among his other sins with having issued money of leather, but any stone is good enough to cast at a dog with such a surname.