Iraq P-87 100 Dinars 2002 UNC

Color: blue/purple with lavender

Size: small format of Saddam series

Front: Saddam Hussein at right; lavender flora design vertical bar along right side, dark purple bar across bottom, blank left quarter of note with two shell designs on which the denomination is written in East Arabic numbers on the bottom shell.

Back: Houses of Old Baghdad and spirograph-style design

Banknote Characteristics

• Color: Blue and purple on multicolor underprint
• Front:
  • Saddam Hussein at right
  • Lavender floral vertical bar along right side
  • Dark purple bar across bottom
  • Blank left size but for two shell-shaped designs
  • Denomination in East Arabic numerals on bottom shell design; issuing bank name and denomination in Arabic script
• Back:
  • Shenashils (traditional projecting wooden balconies) of Old Baghdad
  • Denomination in Latin script
  • Spirograph-style design
• Watermark: None specified
• UV: Fibers fluoresce blue and yellow
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 160 × 70 mm
• Issuing entity: Central Bank of Iraq (البنك المركزي العراقي)
• Printer: Not specified
• Demonetized: Yes — no longer legal tender
• Signatures: Not specified
• Currency: Iraqi dinar (1931–date)
• Calendar: Dated 1422 AH (2002 AD)

About Iraq

• Capital: Baghdad — city pop. ~7.5 million; metro pop. ~8.5 million
• Population: ~42 million (UN 2024) — similar to Algeria or California
• Area: 438,317 km² (169,235 mi²)
• GDP per capita at PPP: ~$10,500 USD (IMF 2024) — ranks ~120th out of 193 globally
• Main exports: Crude oil (~99% of export revenue), natural gas, dates
• Borders: Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran; short coastline on the Persian Gulf
• Official/spoken languages: Arabic and Kurdish (both official); significant minorities speak Turkmen, Neo-Aramaic, and Armenian
• Sovereignty:
  • Mesopotamia — cradle of civilization; home to Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria (c. 3500–539 BC)
  • Achaemenid Persian, Seleucid, and Parthian rule (539 BC–224 AD)
  • Sasanian Empire (224–637 AD)
  • Arab-Islamic conquest (637) — Islam replaces older religions as the dominant faith; Baghdad founded 762 AD as capital of the Abbasid Caliphate — then the largest city on earth
  • Mongol sack of Baghdad (1258) — end of the Abbasid Caliphate; estimated 200,000–800,000 killed
  • Ottoman rule (1534–1918)
  • British Mandate (1920–1932) — Iraq created as a modern state; borders drawn by colonial powers
  • Kingdom of Iraq (1932–1958) — nominal independence under Hashemite monarchy
  • 14 July Revolution (1958) — monarchy overthrown; Republic proclaimed
  • Ba’ath Party rule (1968–2003); Saddam Hussein president 1979–2003 — this note issued during this period
  • US-led invasion (2003) — Saddam Hussein removed; Ba’ath Party dissolved; this note demonetized
  • Republic of Iraq (2003–date) — parliamentary system under US occupation and subsequent sovereignty

Iraq Unfiltered

• Iraq sits atop the world’s fifth-largest proven oil reserves — yet per capita income remains a fraction of neighboring Gulf states, a consequence of wars, sanctions, and decades of mismanagement.
• Baghdad in the 8th–9th century was the largest city on earth, home to the House of Wisdom — a library and translation center that preserved Greek, Persian, and Indian knowledge while Europe was in the Dark Ages.
• The face on this note, Saddam Hussein, was captured hiding in a hole in the ground near Tikrit in December 2003, nine months after the US invasion. He was executed by hanging in 2006.
• This note was printed in 2002 — one year before the invasion that ended the government that issued it. It is a document of a state in its final year.

The last Saddam note: printed one year before the end

P-87 was issued in 2002, the final full year of Saddam Hussein’s government. The US-led invasion came in March 2003; by April, Baghdad had fallen; by May, the Coalition Provisional Authority had dissolved the Ba’ath Party and begun replacing the currency. This note was demonetized before the ink was a year old.

Saddam’s portrait had appeared on Iraqi banknotes since the early 1980s — a standard feature of his personality cult, which extended to statues, murals, and public imagery across the country. The 100-dinar note was a workhorse denomination, used in everyday transactions. His face on a note this ordinary was not a statement of grandeur; it was wallpaper. Ubiquity was the point.

Shenashils: the architecture of Old Baghdad

The reverse shows the shenashils — the distinctive projecting wooden balconies of Old Baghdad. These enclosed latticed bay windows, cantilevered over narrow streets, were a defining feature of the city’s traditional domestic architecture from the Ottoman period through the early 20th century. They served multiple purposes: shading the street below, catching cross-breezes, and allowing women to observe public life without being seen — a spatial solution to the social codes of the time.

By 2002, most of the original shenashil neighborhoods had been demolished or left to decay. Putting them on the currency was an act of nostalgic nationalism — a government invoking an architectural heritage it had done little to preserve. The irony is that the invasion completed what neglect had started: much of what remained of Old Baghdad’s historic fabric was damaged or looted in the chaos of 2003 and after.

Own this document of Iraq’s final year under Saddam

This P-87 is a 100-dinar note printed in 2002, the last year of the Ba’ath government, in UNC condition — never circulated, never spent, never used in the economy it was issued to serve. It carries the face of a dictator who would be dead within four years, above the image of an architectural tradition that was already disappearing. A note that outlasted the government that printed it.

Issued 2002. Demonetized 2003. Still here.