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10 000 Leva Rider of Madara
| Issuer | Bulgarian National Bank |
|---|---|
| Year | 1998 |
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| Weight | 23.33 g |
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| Obverse description | Central field depicts the Madara Rider, a celebrated early medieval rock relief: a mounted warrior facing right on a striding horse, with a lion prostrate beneath the horse's hooves and a dog following behind, rendered in low relief after the iconic 8th-century carving. The circular legend РЕПУБЛИКА БЪЛГАРИЯ arcs along the upper rim, with the date 1998 at lower left and the denomination 10 000 ЛЕВА along the lower rim, all separated by dot stops. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Cyrillic |
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| Additional information |
The Madara Rider is a large rock relief carved into a cliff face in northeastern Bulgaria, dating to around 710 AD and attributed to the early Bulgarian khans. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. Bulgaria issued numerous commemorative silver pieces featuring this image across the 1990s, a period when the country was cycling through severe monetary instability — the lev collapsed catastrophically in 1996–97, triggering hyperinflation that briefly pushed the exchange rate past 3,000 leva to the dollar before a currency board was imposed in mid-1997.
The 10,000-leva denomination is a direct artifact of that crisis.