Banknote Billet Iran 20 rials Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, dernier Shah d´Iran 1974-1979

This 20 Iranian rials banknote belongs to a series issued between 1974 and 1979, during the reign of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. It stands as a direct testimony to the Iranian monarchical period, just before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which brought an end to the Pahlavi dynasty.

The banknote features the portrait of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the sovereign who ruled Iran from 1941 until his overthrow in 1979. His depiction on Iranian banknotes of that era was common practice, reflecting the centralism of monarchical power around the figure of the Shah.

On the reverse, the banknote illustrates a dam, a powerful symbolic motif evoking the great ambitions of modernisation and industrialisation carried by the Shah's regime as part of the policy known as the White Revolution. The construction of hydroelectric dams and hydraulic infrastructures was then a major challenge for the country's economic and agricultural development.

The face value of 20 rials fits within the Iranian monetary hierarchy of the time, the rial being the official monetary unit of Iran. This banknote thus represents an intermediate denomination within the monetary system in force under the Pahlavi monarchy.

From a historical and numismatic perspective, banknotes issued between 1974 and 1979 hold particular importance, as they belong to the final years of the Iranian monarchy. After the 1979 revolution, representations of the Shah were naturally withdrawn from circulation and replaced by imagery in keeping with the principles of the new Islamic Republic, making these banknotes representative of a bygone period of Iranian history.