100 Manat Məhəmməd Füzuli

Məhəmməd Füzuli, the 16th-century Azerbaijani poet whose work in Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic made him one of the most significant literary figures of the Turkic world, died around 1556 — likely of plague — in Karbala, where he had spent much of his adult life under Ottoman patronage. This coin was issued just five years after Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union, part of a conscious effort to anchor national identity in pre-Soviet cultural figures rather than political ones.

The National Bank issued several gold denominations in this series simultaneously. Füzuli's inclusion alongside other national figures reflected deliberate policy choices about who counted as foundational to the new state.