200 Tenge SUYINBAY

Suyinbay Aronov (c. 1815–1898) was an Kazakh aqyn — an improvising oral poet who competed in the айтыс tradition, where two poets duel through sung verse before a live audience. His most famous contest, against the Kyrgyz aqyn Katagan, became so legendary that it passed into oral history with disputed versions of who actually won. Kazakhstan's rehabilitation of pre-Soviet cultural figures accelerated sharply after independence, and the aqyn series of circulating commemoratives has been one vehicle for that project.