100 Kurush

The Hazine-i Devlet notes of the 1860s emerged from a period of acute fiscal strain — the Ottoman state had borrowed heavily to finance the Crimean War and was servicing foreign debt at ruinous terms. These treasury instruments were not conventional banknotes in the central-bank sense but state paper obligations, convertible in theory, increasingly dubious in practice.

P#38 is among the larger-denomination kaime issues and carries both Ottoman script and a tughra authorization. Forgery was a persistent problem with this series; the Porte eventually had to issue public warnings and circulate authentication guides to provincial governors.