10 Kuruş Second 'Kaime' issue

The term "kaime" (from the Arabic for "standing" or "upright") had already acquired a toxic reputation in Ottoman financial memory by the time this series appeared. The original kaimeler of the 1840s had been issued in such volume to fund Mahmud II's military reforms that they collapsed in value almost immediately, requiring forced acceptance laws to keep them in circulation at all. This second wartime series was issued under similarly desperate conditions — the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 was draining the treasury at a rate no conventional borrowing could cover.

The elongated format was a deliberate anti-counterfeiting choice, making the notes difficult to reproduce on standard presses available outside the capital.