50 Dirhams

Qatar's first independent coinage, introduced following the country's separation from the Bahrain and Qatar Currency Board arrangement in 1973, was designed to assert financial autonomy after decades of shared Gulf monetary infrastructure. The Currency Board's riyal had itself only replaced the Indian rupee in 1966, meaning Qatar cycled through three distinct monetary systems in under a decade.

The KM#5 type ran largely unchanged for 25 years — an unusually long production span that reflects the political stability of the Al Thani government and minimal pressure to reissue.