500 Rials Saadi Tomb

The tomb of Sa'di in Shiraz — the 13th-century poet whose Golestan and Bustan remain foundational texts of Persian literature — became a site of formal national commemoration under the Pahlavi dynasty, with the current mausoleum rebuilt in 1952. Placing it on circulating coinage under the Islamic Republic is a studied choice: the regime had complicated relationships with pre-Islamic and secular cultural heritage, yet Sa'di's moralistic verse proved durable enough ideologically to survive the revolution intact.