500 Rials Imam Reza shrine

This note belongs to the first series issued after the Islamic Revolution, when the new government faced an immediate problem: vast quantities of pre-revolutionary banknotes — many bearing the Shah's portrait — remained in circulation. Rather than printing entirely new notes from scratch, the interim solution was to overprint existing De La Rue-produced stock with Islamic Republic imagery, effectively defacing the old regime's iconography. The Imam Reza shrine reverse was part of this transitional visual vocabulary, chosen explicitly for its religious rather than political associations.

The continued use of Thomas De La Rue as printer is worth noting. Despite the revolutionary government's hostility toward Western influence, the practical reality of secure currency production meant relying on the same London contractor the Shah had used.