1.000 Kuruş

The 1,000 Kuruş of 1840 belongs to the first generation of Ottoman paper money ever issued — the Kaime-i mutebere-i nakdiye, introduced under Sultan Abdülmecid I as an emergency fiscal measure to fund military expenditures following the costly Egyptian crisis of 1839 and the broader strain of Tanzimat-era reforms. The Ottoman state had no central bank at this point; the Hazine-i Amire issued these notes directly as interest-bearing instruments, a hybrid of bond and banknote that the public treated with considerable skepticism.

Forgery was a serious problem almost immediately. The security apparatus was rudimentary — a hand-applied official seal — and the notes were produced domestically without the sophisticated intaglio printing available to European issuers of the period. Later Kaime emissions required increasingly elaborate countermeasures precisely because this inaugural series proved so easy to replicate.