Issued to commemorate the 1,400th anniversary of the Islamic Hijra calendar, this gold piece was part of a broader wave of state-sponsored commemorative issues across the Arab world marking the same occasion in 1981. Iraq's version was produced under Ba'athist authority at a moment when the country was already eight months into the Iran-Iraq War — a conflict that would consume the economy for nearly a decade and make luxury gold issues of this kind an immediate anachronism.
Issued to commemorate the 1,400th anniversary of the Islamic Hijra calendar, this gold piece was part of a broader wave of state-sponsored commemorative issues across the Arab world marking the same occasion in 1981. Iraq's version was produced under Ba'athist authority at a moment when the country was already eight months into the Iran-Iraq War — a conflict that would consume the economy for nearly a decade and make luxury gold issues of this kind an immediate anachronism.