500 Manat

Azerbaijan's 1993 manat series was issued under extraordinarily difficult conditions — the country was simultaneously fighting a war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, managing the collapse of Soviet-era supply chains, and building monetary infrastructure from scratch after declaring independence in 1991. The Ministry of Finance, rather than a central bank, served as issuer because the National Bank of Azerbaijan had not yet assumed full institutional authority over currency emission.

The 500 manat was the highest denomination in this first generation of notes. Inflation quickly made it inadequate, and a second series followed within a few years before the currency was eventually redenominated entirely in 2006 at a rate of 5,000 old manat to one new manat.