Catalog
10 Tomans
| Issuer | Imperial Bank of Persia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1927 |
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| Currency | Qiran (1825-1932) |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | THE IMPERIAL BANK OF PERSIA TEN 10 TEN TOMANS |
| Reverse description | Printed in red-orange on a cream paper ground, the reverse is organised around a central medallion bearing the large numeral '10' set within dense guilloche lacework, flanked by a circular cartouche to the left carrying the word legend 'TEN' and an equivalent cartouche to the right. Serial numbers appear in black at each of the four corners within scalloped frames, and the bank title 'THE IMPERIAL BANK OF PERSIA' runs along the upper border with 'TEN TOMANS' along the lower border. The printer's imprint of Waterlow & Sons Limited is present at the foot of the central panel. |
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| Comments |
The Imperial Bank of Persia was a British concession, chartered in 1889 under a grant from Naser al-Din Shah that gave it the exclusive right to issue banknotes in Persia. That concession was always politically contentious, and by the mid-1920s the newly consolidated Pahlavi government under Reza Shah was actively working to reclaim Iranian control over state banking. This 1927 note was issued in the final years before that arrangement collapsed — the bank lost its note-issuing rights in 1930 when Bank Melli Iran was established as the national state bank.
Waterlow & Sons printed the series throughout, a firm responsible for a significant share of British colonial and concession-bank currency during this period. The relatively short window of the P#14's active circulation, combined with Persian banknotes' historically low survival rates, makes intact examples genuinely uncommon.