50 Dīnār - Nāṣer al-Dīn Qājār Pattern issue

Pattern coinage under Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh was often produced at the behest of the Dār al-Żarb in Tehran as the court experimented with decimal monetary reform — a project that consumed intermittent attention throughout the 1860s but never fully stabilized into consistent production. This piece is among the trial strikes from that period, almost certainly never released for circulation.

Nāṣer al-Dīn had toured European mints by 1873, and domestic pattern activity in the years preceding that trip reflects genuine institutional pressure to modernize Iranian coinage along Western lines. The bronze fabric of this issue is itself the argument — silver and gold dominated Iranian circulation, and bronze fractions were a European import concept the bazaar economy had little structural need for.