100 Baisa - Qaboos Sultanate Anniversary

Issued to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of Sultan Qaboos bin Said's accession, which followed the palace coup of July 23, 1970, in which Qaboos overthrew his own father, Said bin Taimur, with backing from the British government. Said bin Taimur had kept Oman in deliberate isolation — banning radios, eyeglasses, and foreign travel for citizens — while oil revenues accumulated largely unspent. The transformation Qaboos initiated in the years following remains one of the more rapid state modernizations of the twentieth century.

KM#197 was struck at the Royal Mint, UK, under contract to the Central Bank of Oman.