AFGHANISTAN. Kingdom. Mohammad Zahir Shah, 1933-1973. Bronze 25 Pul. Kabul, SH1313 (1934). KM-931.

This bronze 25 Pul was struck at the Kabul Mint in SH1313 (1934 AD), in only the second year of Mohammad Zahir Shah's reign as King of Afghanistan. Zahir Shah ascended to the throne on 8 November 1933 at the age of 19, following the assassination of his father Mohammad Nadir Shah, and would go on to reign for nearly four decades — becoming the longest-serving ruler of Afghanistan since the founding of the Durrani Empire. The SH1313 date places this coin at the very opening chapter of that extraordinary reign.

Catalogued as KM-931, this type was struck in bronze and was produced from SH1312 through SH1316 (1933–1937), spanning the entire first phase of Zahir Shah's rule before a redesigned coinage series replaced it. At 25 Pul, this coin represented one quarter of an Afghani — a mid-tier denomination in everyday Afghan commerce of the 1930s that circulated widely and was rarely preserved.

Because these coins were everyday spending money rather than items set aside for preservation, examples with original detail intact are correspondingly difficult to find, and the SH1313 date as the second year of production carries additional appeal for collectors building type sets or date runs of the Kingdom of Afghanistan series.