By the 1720s a full spectrum of silver coinage had emerged from the gurush down to the para and the tiny akche. While the gurush, zolota and the 20 para piece were used for medium and larger transactions, 1, 5 and 10 para pieces served as petty coinage. By this time, the purchasing power of the akche, valued at one-third of the para, had become too small for most daily purposes.^[4] For this reason, the para, more than the akche, served as the basic unit of account for small transactions. In addition, some copper coinage were minted in Istanbul and eastern Anatolia but their volumes were limited.

As for gold coins, the Ottoman sultani, or sherifi as it was also called, which had remained close to the standards of the Venetian ducat since the fifteenth century was discontinued late in the seventeenth century. In the early part of the eighteenth century, as gold made a comeback in Europe and elsewhere, Ottoman minting activity also resumed. In the place of the sultani, a number of new gold coins called tughrali, cedid Istanbul, zincirli, findik and zer-i mahbub were initiated between 1697 and 1728. All but the last of these started close to the standards of the ducat. Following the practice dating back to the fifteenth century, the government did not attach a fixed face value to these gold coins. Their exchange rates were determined by the markets. In payments to the state, gold coins were accepted at the official rates of exchange.

   The eighteenth century until the 1780s was a period of commercial and economic expansion coupled with fiscal stability in most parts of the Ottoman Empire. These favorable conditions as well as the rising supplies of silver helped establish the gurush as the leading unit of account and means of exchange by the middle of the eighteenth century. The emergence of the new unit was accompanied by centralization of mint activity in the core regions of the empire, from the Balkans to Anatolia, as well as Syria and Iraq.

1. These new coins carried the date of H.1099 (1687-88), the year of accession to the throne of sultan Süleyman II.
2. Numismatic catalogues incorrectly suggest that the 6 dirham piece minted in 1690 was the first Ottoman gurush and the weight of the Ottoman gurush was revised upwards to 8 dirhams in 1703.
3. The new unit was also called cedid (new) gurush to distinguish it from the European groschen, most notably the esedi ("lion") gurus or the Dutch thaler which had become emerged a unit of account as well as a medium of exchange for medium and large transactions. See J. Sultan, Coins of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, A Detailed Catalogue of the Jem Sultan Collection, 2 vols., (Thousand Oaks, California: B and R Publishers, 1977), pp. 196-211.
4. The daily wage of an unskilled construction worker in Istanbul was approximately 8 paras or 24 akches during the early decades of the eighteenth century.

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