10 Som Kurmanjan Datka

Kurmanjan Datka ruled the Alai region of what is now southern Kyrgyzstan through the second half of the 19th century, negotiating the Khanate of Kokand's collapse and then a careful accommodation with the advancing Russian Empire rather than a suicidal resistance. The Russians, impressed enough to leave her administrative authority largely intact, gave her the title "Datka" — a rank equivalent to a military governor. She made the brutal calculation in 1876 to allow her own son Kamchybek to be executed by Russian authorities rather than trigger a reprisal that would have devastated the Alai Kyrgyz population.

This issue is part of the National Bank's ongoing commemorative program celebrating figures absent from Soviet-era official memory.