100 Tomans

The Imperial Bank of Persia was a British-chartered institution, established under a concession granted by Naser al-Din Shah in 1889, giving it the exclusive right to issue banknotes throughout Persia. That concession was deeply controversial from the start — Iranian merchants and clerics resented the arrangement, and public distrust of paper money meant high-denomination notes like this 100 Toman piece saw almost no genuine circulation among ordinary commerce. They were instruments of large mercantile and government transactions, if used at all.

Bradbury Wilkinson's printing plates for this series remained in service across an unusually long window, which is why notes dated across three decades can show nearly identical physical characteristics.