500 Manat Gara Yusup Beg

Gara Yusup Beg — known in Persian sources as Qara Yusuf — was the Turkmen chief of the Black Sheep confederation who defeated and killed Timur's son Miran Shah at the Battle of Sardrud in 1408, briefly reversing Timurid dominance over western Persia and Azerbaijan. His inclusion on a Turkmen commemorative coin in 2001 reflects the newly independent state's project of anchoring national identity to pre-Russian, pre-Soviet Turkic rulers — a deliberate reach back past two centuries of outside control to claim a medieval warrior as a founding cultural figure.