Middle East NE Cheque/Check (Cancelled)—Type 112123—2000000 Rials—Violet/Pink

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Iran 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 A Bank Melli guaranteed cheque could be withdrawn from a branch and passed directly from hand to hand to pay for a car, settle a wholesale deal, or close a property transaction.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 Saderat 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 Building: Tomb of Ferdowsi

The structure depicted is the Tomb of Ferdowsi, located in Tus, near Mashhad. Unlike the "stylized synthesis" of the 1,000,000 cheque, this is a very faithful architectural rendering:

• Architectural Style: It is a prominent example of the Achaemenid revival style, designed by Hossein Lorzadeh in the 1930s. It was built to resemble the Tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae.
• Key Features: You can see the distinct stepped platform (basement) and the rectangular cubic tomb chamber decorated with engaged columns and friezes.
• Cultural Significance: As the author of the Shahnameh (the Persian national epic), Ferdowsi is a non-religious, unifying figure, which makes this building a common choice for high-value national documents.

The Color Palette

Primary Hues: The dominant colors are pink, violet, and soft lavender.

Secondary Tones: There are subtle underlays of light blue and gray in the geometric patterns and the background guilloche work.

Persia's Shakespeare, Homer, and Founder of the Persian Language and Identity for the Last 1,000 Years

Abolqasem Ferdowsi was born around 940 CE in the village of Paj, near Tus in the Khorasan region of what is now northeastern Iran. He came from the dehqan class—landed Persian gentry who had survived the Arab conquest of the 7th century with their estates and, crucially, their cultural memory intact. That memory was his inheritance and his obsession.

He spent roughly thirty years writing the Shahnameh—the Book of Kings—completing it around 1010 CE. At approximately 60,000 couplets, it is one of the longest poems ever written by a single author. It recounts the mythological and historical kings of Iran from the creation of the world to the Arab conquest—a sweep of time so vast it reads less like a poem and more like a civilization talking to itself.

The political context was everything. Arabic had become the language of religion, administration, and prestige across the Islamic world. Persian was in danger of being reduced to a spoken vernacular with no literary future. Ferdowsi wrote the Shahnameh almost entirely in New Persian, deliberately minimizing Arabic loanwords. He reportedly boasted that he had used fewer than a handful. Whether or not that is literally true, the effect was real: he fixed the Persian language in a form that remained intelligible for a thousand years. No other writer in history has done that for a major language at the moment of its greatest vulnerability.

The story of his relationship with Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni is one of the great bitter legends of literary history. Ferdowsi dedicated the Shahnameh to Mahmud and expected a gold coin for every couplet—60,000 gold coins in total. Mahmud sent silver instead. Ferdowsi, furious, distributed the silver to a bathhouse attendant and a beer seller, then wrote a savage satire of the sultan before fleeing into exile. He died around 1020 CE, reportedly just as a caravan bearing Mahmud's belated gold payment arrived at the city gates. The gold reached Tus; Ferdowsi did not live to receive it.

None of that diminished what he had built. The Shahnameh became the foundation text of Persian cultural identity—read across Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and the broader Persian-speaking world. Its heroes, above all Rostam, became household names. Its verses are quoted at weddings, funerals, and political speeches. It is the reason Persian survived as a literary language when so many others did not. Homer gave Greece its myths. Shakespeare gave England its language. Ferdowsi did both — for a civilization under conquest.

Placing his tomb on a document used as money was not a decorative choice. It was a statement: this culture has roots older than any inflation, any regime, any conquest. The cheque may be cancelled. The poet is not.