2 Qiran - Nāṣer al-Dīn Qājār

Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh's long reign — 1848 to 1896 — was marked by chronic fiscal pressure and repeated monetary reforms, and the qiran system introduced in 1825 was itself a rationalization attempt that never fully stabilized Iran's coinage. By the 1890s, the shah was deep in debt to Russia and Britain, having sold concessions including the notorious 1890 tobacco monopoly granted to a British firm — a concession so deeply resented that the resulting boycott and clerical fatwa forced its cancellation in 1892, just a year before this piece was struck.