50 Tenge Shoqan

Shokан Uälikhanov — the Russianized spelling renders him "Chokan Valikhanov" in most Western sources — was a 19th-century Kazakh scholar, geographer, and tsarist intelligence officer who died of tuberculosis at roughly 29 years old, having already completed a covert mission into the closed city of Kashgar disguised as a merchant. Kazakhstan's commemorative coinage program has returned to him repeatedly, a reflection of how central he remains to the national historical narrative constructed after 1991.