5000 Rials Imam Reza shrine

Pick 130 was part of the immediate post-revolutionary overhaul of Iranian currency imagery, issued after the new Islamic Republic moved to replace the Pahlavi-era note designs with iconography appropriate to the new order. The 5000 Rial denomination had been the highest in regular circulation under the Shah, making it a particular priority for ideological replacement.

Thomas De La Rue continued printing Iranian notes into the early revolutionary period — a pragmatic arrangement that outlasted the political rupture of 1979 by several years, given Iran's lack of domestic high-security printing capacity at the time.