India and the Gulf States
Relations between the Indian subcontinent and the Persian/Arabian Gulf stretch back millennia and have left many traces, both tangible and intangible, to the present day.
Coins minted in India under British rule (Raj) were the main means of payment used in the small sheikhdoms in the northeast of the Arabian Peninsula during the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.
A fine example is a rupee from 1840 bearing the portrait of Queen Victoria and the inscription "East India Company" which was counter marked in the 1960s with an intriguing design: a gazelle and the inscriptions "Qatar and Dubai."