Middle East NE Cheque/Check (Cancelled)—Type 112122—1000000 Rials—Green

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the country found itself in an awkward monetary moment. Prices were rising quickly, but the Central Bank had not yet issued very high-denomination banknotes. Introducing new notes was not just a technical matter of design and printing; it carried political weight. Large denominations are read by the public as an admission that "inflation has become permanent". For that reason, approvals were cautious and often slow, involving both the central bank and Parliament, where there was reluctance to visibly normalize inflation by putting million-rial figures into everyday wallets.

Guaranteed cheques offered a quieter workaround. Issued by Bank Melli Iran and other banks, they were classified as banking instruments rather than legal-tender banknotes. This distinction mattered. A cheque could be framed as a practical tool for moving large sums—temporary, transactional, and reversible—rather than as a public statement about the currency itself. Designing them was not necessarily faster than engraving banknotes, but they required far fewer political approvals and avoided the symbolic moment of announcing a new denomination to the public. In practice, they filled the gap that official banknotes had not yet crossed.

For people on the ground, the experience was simple. A Bank Melli guaranteed cheque could be withdrawn from a branch and passed directly from hand to hand to pay for a car, settle a wholesale deal, or close a property transaction. As long as the cheque kept circulating, it usually remained unpunched and unstamped, aside from signatures or handwritten notes. The familiar holes, cancellation stamps, and bank markings typically appeared only at the end of its life, when someone finally deposited it, redeemed it for cash, or when banks cleared and retired it internally. At that point it was marked to prevent reuse, then normally destroyed—one reason surviving examples are so scarce today.

Their denominations—from 200,000 to 5,000,000 rials—capture a moment when everyday economic life had already outgrown the official banknote structure, and the banking system quietly improvised a solution. For collectors, the wear, punches, and stamps are not flaws but evidence: these cheques were handled, trusted, and used as money until the moment they finally returned to the banking system.

Identifying Bank and Series on an Iran Cheque or Melli Cheque

The series and bank of issuance for Melli Cheques and the multibank Iran cheques can be identified by the first six numbers of the MICR line (the line printed at the bottom of the cheque towards the left). 

Note that this does not apply to

• Bank Melli Griffin series which bears serial numbers and no MICR line
• Iran Cheques since 2008 which are issued by the Central Bank of Iran

Position 1, 2, 3: cheque series

• Griffin series: none (no MICR line)
• Iran Cheque 2nd Issue: 112
• Melli Cheque 116

Positions 4 and 5: bank

• 12 Bank Mellat
• 13 Bank Refah
• 14 Bank Maskan
• 15 Bank Sepah
• 16 Bank Keshavarzi (Agricultural Bank)
• 17 Bank Melli Iran
• 18 Bank Tejarat
• 19 Bank Saderat Iran
• 20 Bank Tuseh-e Sadarat e Iran

Position 6: denomination

• 0 — 200,000 rials
• 1 — 500,000 rials
• 2 — 1,000,000 rials
• 3 — 2,000,000 rials
• 4 — 5,000,000 rials

The Mosque on the Note — Part Real, Part Imagined…

You look at the mosque on this note and there’s a faint sense of recognition—like you’ve seen it before, somewhere in Iran, maybe in Shiraz, maybe in a photograph, maybe just in your mind. And then you hesitate, because you can’t quite place it. It’s familiar, but not identifiable. In a way, it is a real place—but only in the same sense that a perfect “postcard cathedral” is real: assembled from truth, but not bound to any single building.

What it most closely echoes is the world of the Shah Cheragh shrine in Shiraz, part of the long tradition of Iranian imamzadeh architecture—shrines built around the tombs of revered descendants of the Prophet. These belong to a lineage shaped by several civilizations layered over one another: the Timurid era, which perfected the great dome-and-iwan language; the Safavid period, which refined symmetry, color, and urban presence; and later Persian traditions, especially in cities like Shiraz, where shrines became more intimate, horizontal, and human in scale. If you’re looking for a Western analogy, think of how a Gothic cathedral evolves into a Baroque church—same spiritual idea, but softened, reorganized, made more approachable.

And that’s exactly the register this building sits in. It has the calm, grounded presence of a Shirazi shrine rather than the towering drama of something like Mashhad’s Goharshad Mosque. The dome is central, confident but not overwhelming. The two minarets don’t dominate; they frame. The whole composition feels settled, almost conversational, rather than imperial.

But then you start noticing the details that don’t quite line up with reality. There’s that second, smaller dome or mass beside the main one. In real life, a shrine like Shah Cheragh is a sprawling, layered complex—courtyards, halls, additions from different centuries. It doesn’t present itself as two neat domes side by side. Here, though, that complexity has been translated into a simple visual cue: one dome says “sacred center,” the second quietly says “this is more than just a single space.” It’s like seeing multiple towers on a European church and immediately understanding it has importance and depth, even if you’ve never been inside.

The same thing happens with the façade. In reality, you would approach through a courtyard, pass through thresholds, experience the building in stages. Here, all of that has been gently flattened. The entrance is there, but it doesn’t invite you in—it just signals that inside exists. The minarets are pushed outward to the edges, like parentheses, giving the whole structure a sense of balance that real buildings rarely achieve. It’s not how shrines behave; it’s how symbols behave.

What you end up with is something quite elegant: a Shah Cheragh–type shrine, distilled through the aesthetics of state design. The Timurid and Safavid architectural vocabulary is still present—the dome, the axial symmetry, the sacred geometry—but it has been disciplined into a form that can circulate on currency. All the irregularities, the centuries of additions, the lived-in quality of the place have been smoothed away.

So yes, it’s Shiraz—but it’s Shiraz remembered, simplified, and made portable. A shrine that no one has ever stood in front of, but that somehow still feels entirely Iranian.