Iranian banknotes — from the Imperial Bank toman to the modern rial

A short history of Iranian paper money

Iran came to paper currency relatively late by international standards but with great speed once the question was settled. Until the closing decades of the 19th century the economy ran on silver qirans, copper falus and a thin layer of gold tomans; commercial bills of exchange (hawala) and Russian, Ottoman or British coins circulated in border provinces. The first true Iranian banknotes were authorised in 1889, when Naser al-Din Shah Qajar granted a sixty-year banking concession to a British group that organised the Imperial Bank of Persia. From 1890 the bank issued notes in denominations of 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000 tomans.

The early Imperial Bank notes were unusual in being non-fungible: each note bore the name of the issuing branch — Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, Mashhad, Bushehr, Rasht, Shiraz, Hamadan or Kermanshah — and was redeemable in silver only at that branch. A Tehran-issued 5-toman note presented in Bushehr was at the holder's risk of discount. This local-redemption system reflected both the difficulty of moving silver across the Iranian plateau and the limited trust the public placed in printed paper. The notes themselves were printed in London by Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co.; their lithographic vignettes — a lion-and-sun crest, an oil lamp, a portrait of the reigning shah — are now prized by collectors.

From qiran to rial, 1932

Reza Shah Pahlavi's monetary reform of 27 March 1932 abolished the qiran and introduced the rial at one-to-one parity (with the toman retained as an informal unit equal to ten rials). The same law transferred the note-issuing privilege from the Imperial Bank to the newly founded Bank Melli Iran (National Bank of Iran). The first Bank Melli notes appeared in late 1932 in denominations from 5 to 500 rials; their design, printed by the German firm Giesecke & Devrient and later by De La Rue, broke sharply with the Imperial Bank style by featuring large central portraits of Reza Shah and ornate Persian-script panels.

In 1961 the note-issue privilege passed again, this time to the newly constituted Bank Markazi Iran (Central Bank). Bank Markazi notes of the 1960s and early 1970s carried Mohammad Reza Shah's portrait on the obverse and a sequence of national landmarks on the reverse — Persepolis, the Karaj Dam, the Amir Kabir refinery, the gilded dome of the Imam Reza shrine. The denominations climbed steadily: a 1,000-rial note appeared in 1962, a 5,000 in 1973, a 10,000 in 1974, reflecting both genuine economic growth and the accelerating inflation that followed the 1973 oil shock.

2,500 years of Persian Empire (1971)

The most celebrated single banknote of modern Iran is the 50-rial note issued in October 1971 for the 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire at Persepolis. The face carries Mohammad Reza Shah in the dress uniform of an Iranian field marshal; the reverse depicts the assembled foreign monarchs at the tent city of Persepolis. The note was produced in extremely large quantities — almost everyone in Iran kept one — and survives today in uncirculated grade more easily than most contemporary issues. The matching set of commemorative gold coins (from quarter to ten Pahlavi) is treated in our Pahlavi catalogue.

Overprints, replacements and the Republic

After the revolution of February 1979 the Pahlavi portrait on circulating notes was an immediate political problem. The interim government's solution was an overprint: a black geometric design covering the shah's face while the rest of the note remained valid currency. By 1980 fully redesigned Islamic Republic notes had begun to appear, initially without portraits and bearing only architecture, calligraphy and revolutionary slogans. From 1992 a new series re-introduced a portrait — that of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — which has remained on Iranian banknotes ever since. Reverses depict the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, the Khomeini mausoleum, Persepolis, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and other sites of religious or political significance.

Iran cheques and the toman redenomination

As inflation accelerated in the 2000s and 2010s, Bank Markazi began issuing "Iran cheque" (cheque-e Iran) notes — technically bearer cheques drawn on Bank Markazi but circulating as currency — in 500,000 and 1,000,000 rial denominations to relieve pressure on the printed note-stock. These cheque-notes look and handle exactly like banknotes but legally were not, which allowed the government to issue them without parliamentary approval of new rial denominations.

On 4 May 2020 the Iranian parliament approved a redenomination that removes four zeros from the rial and renames the currency the toman: 1 new toman = 10,000 old rials. The transition was originally planned to take two years but has been extended; both old-rial and new-toman notes are expected to circulate side by side for some time. The first toman-denominated notes were printed by the State Printing House (Sherkat-e Chap va Enteshar) in Tehran and use updated anti-counterfeit features including watermark portraits, see-through registers and intaglio printing.

Collecting Iranian banknotes

Iranian banknotes are a comparatively friendly collecting field. Pahlavi-era notes from 1932 to 1979 are available in all grades, with the most desirable being early Bank Melli high denominations (500 and 1,000 rials) and the 1971 Persepolis commemorative in uncirculated condition. Imperial Bank of Persia notes are much rarer — most were redeemed and destroyed when the concession ended in 1930 — and surviving specimens with intact branch overprints command four- and five-figure prices in major auctions. Islamic Republic notes are accessible to beginners but watch for the "haj" overprints (small green or red Arabic stamps) which mark specific pilgrim-bank issues and are scarce.

Authentication relies on familiar criteria: watermark legibility, intaglio relief on the portrait, micro-text on the security thread, and the correct serial-number font for the date. Forgeries of Bank Melli high-denomination notes circulated in Iran during the late 1940s and again briefly in the 1980s; both are well-documented and distinguishable by inferior printing of the central portrait.