50 Soʻm Shahrisabz

Shahrisabz — the city depicted on this coin's reverse — was already more than 2,700 years old when Uzbekistan issued this piece, but its modern prominence owes almost entirely to Timur, who was born there around 1336 and lavished it with monumental construction projects the capital Samarkand occasionally didn't receive. The 2002 date places this issue in Uzbekistan's early coinage consolidation period, when the som series was being physically upgraded from aluminum to nickel-clad steel to combat rapid wear in circulation.