12 Kran 10 Shahi on 5 Mark

The Azerbaijan People's Government — a short-lived Soviet-backed separatist administration established in northwestern Iran in late 1945 — issued this note as a provisional currency by overprinting captured or requisitioned German Reichsbanknote stock. The 5 Mark base note, printed by the Reichsdruckerei, had been out of circulation in Germany for decades by that point; exactly how this paper reached the Tabriz-based government remains unclear, but repurposing obsolete foreign banknote stock was a practical necessity for an administration that lasted barely a year before Iranian forces dissolved it in December 1946.

The 1916–1917 dating on the base note is purely a function of the original German printing schedule, not of the Azerbaijani overprint.