1000 Manat

The 2005 1000 Manat belongs to the first generation of banknotes issued under Saparmurat Niyazov's personality cult at its most extreme — the period when state iconography had fully colonized public life, currency included. Giesecke & Devrient, who printed much of this series in Munich, worked to specifications dictated by a government that treated the notes as political instruments as much as monetary ones.

Niyazov died in December 2006. His successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, initiated a currency redenomination in 2009 — one new Manat to 5,000 old — that rendered this entire issue obsolete within four years of printing.