100 Somoni

The 100 Somoni was part of the inaugural somoni series introduced in October 2000, when Tajikistan replaced the Tajik ruble — itself a transitional currency that had been in use since 1995 following the collapse of the Soviet ruble zone. The replacement came after years of civil war that had gutted the country's economy and left inflation chronic. Giesecke & Devrient, who printed the series from Munich, produced notes of noticeably high technical quality relative to the issuing country's economic circumstances at the time.

The denomination is named after the Samanid ruler Ismoil Somoni, a choice with deliberate nation-building intent in a newly post-Soviet state searching for pre-Russian historical identity.