25 Fils

Iraq's republican coinage program of the late 1960s was developed in the immediate aftermath of the Ba'athist coup of July 1968, which brought Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr to power with Saddam Hussein as his deputy. The fils denominations issued from 1969 onward were part of a deliberate effort to replace coinage still carrying monarchist associations — the Hashemite kingdom had been violently abolished a decade earlier in 1958, but numismatic continuity with the old regime lingered uncomfortably. The series ran through 1981, the year Iraq was already eighteen months into its devastating war with Iran.