10 Rials Rezā Pahlavī

Bank Melli Iran was established only in 1928, replacing the British-controlled Imperial Bank of Persia as the state bank and sole note-issuing authority — a deliberately nationalist move by Reza Shah during a period of aggressive modernization and foreign concession rollback. This 1932 note is among the earliest issues of that institution, printed by the American Bank Note Company at a time when Iran was actively redirecting its financial relationships away from British interests and toward American and European alternatives.

ABNC's intaglio work on the early Bank Melli series is finer than the lithographed issues that followed in later decades.