5 Baisa - Said

Muscat and Oman issued this coin under Said bin Taimur, the sultan whose extreme fiscal conservatism — he famously opposed roads, schools, and hospitals as corrupting influences — kept the country in deliberate isolation well into the oil era. The 1962 coinage reform introduced the baisa denominations to replace the earlier anna-based system, a decimal restructuring that Said ultimately couldn't prevent despite his resistance to modernization. He was deposed by his son Qaboos in a palace coup in 1970.