10 Rial - Abdulaziz and Muhammad III Pattern

This copper pattern was struck in 1865 under the dual authority acknowledged in its title — the Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz and the Tunisian Bey Muhammad III as-Sadiq, reflecting the carefully managed fiction of Tunisian autonomy within the Ottoman framework. Patterns of this period were often produced in Paris, where the Tunisian monetary system was being redesigned under mounting pressure from French and European creditors. Tunisia would default on its foreign debt just four years later, in 1869, triggering the international financial commission that effectively stripped Tunis of fiscal independence.