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1 Toman - The Imperial Bank of Persia
| Issuer | Imperial Bank of Persia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1890-1923 |
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| Value | 1 Toman (تومان) (10) |
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| Obverse description | Multicolour note with intricate guilloche borders in red, black and olive, with corner medallions bearing the denomination numeral in Persian script. At left, an oval intaglio vignette depicts the Imperial lion-and-sun emblem within a laurel wreath; at right, an oval portrait vignette shows Naser al-Din Shah in military dress uniform with decorations. The central cartouche carries the denomination یک تومان in bold Persian script over a pink guilloche underprint, flanked by the bank name بانک شاهنشاهی ایران at the top and the date in Latin script below. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
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| Reverse lettering | THE IMPERIAL BANK OF PERSIA ONE TOMAN |
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| Comments |
The Imperial Bank of Persia was itself a British institution — chartered in London in 1889 under a concession granted by Naser al-Din Shah — which makes Bradbury Wilkinson's involvement less a commercial contract than an in-house arrangement between allied British interests. The bank held the exclusive right to issue banknotes throughout Persia, a privilege that generated immediate and sustained hostility from the Persian merchant class, who viewed the whole enterprise, correctly, as an instrument of British financial penetration.
Pick 1 spans over three decades of issuance, meaning surviving examples vary considerably in signature combinations and branch overprints — Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, Rasht, Kerman, and Hamadan all appear. Branch attribution is often the more meaningful collecting variable here than date.