25 Rial - Abdulhamid II and Muhammad III

Tunisia in the late 1870s occupied an awkward dual-sovereignty position: nominally an Ottoman beylik under Abdulhamid II, in practice increasingly under French financial and diplomatic pressure that would culminate in the Protectorate of 1881. This coin, issued under the regency of Muhammad III ibn al-Husayn, was struck during precisely that window of contested authority. The French forced the Bardo Treaty in May 1881, which effectively ended independent Tunisian coinage.

The Fr#5 designation places this squarely in Friedberg's rarest tier for Tunisian gold. Production years align closely with the Conference of Berlin's broader scramble-era tensions in North Africa.