50 Dollars Emperor Yohannes IV

Issued under Haile Selassie's government in the name of Emperor Yohannes IV as part of a commemorative series marking the 1972 Ethiopian Numismatic Society convention, this coin belongs to a set celebrating Ethiopia's nineteenth-century rulers. Yohannes IV defeated the Egyptian army at Gundet in 1875 and Gura in 1876 — two victories that secured Ethiopia's northern frontier — before dying at the Battle of Metemma in 1889 against Mahdist Sudanese forces, his death opening the succession crisis that brought Menelik II to power.