5 Dirhams - Yusuf Ni Essai, without 'Essai'

The "Ni Essai" designation here is a bureaucratic artifact of French colonial minting practice — pattern pieces struck in the intended production metal but without the "Essai" counterstamp, used internally to evaluate dies before authorizing full production runs. Whether this piece ever formally entered circulation or remained administrative is a distinction the Monnaie de Paris rarely documented with precision for Moroccan issues of the protectorate period.

Lec#185 places it within Lecompte's classification of French Morocco patterns, a series notorious among specialists for its overlapping varieties and inconsistent contemporary record-keeping.