Middle East NE P147c SCARCE 20000 rials 2004—Large Portrait—UNESCO-listed Square

Banknote Characteristics

• Varieties: P-147c — Safdar Hosseini signature 16 mm wide (the largest of three signature varieties in the 1st Issue; P-147a has Sheibani/Mazaheri, P-147b has Hosseini 12 mm)
• Color: Obverse: blue and green on multicolor underprint. Reverse: blue, purple, and green.
• Front: Large portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; denomination and issuing bank name in Persian script
• Back: Naqsh-e Jahan Square at center; issuing bank name and denomination in Latin script
• Watermark: Portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
• Composition: 100% cotton paper
• Size: 163 × 78 mm
• Issuing entity: Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Printer: Security Paper Mill (TAKAB), Āmol, Iran — printed by the Security Printing and Minting Organization (SPMO) of Iran
• Demonetized: No — still legal tender
• Signatures: Gov. Ebrahim Sheibani + Safdar Hosseini (Minister of Economic Affairs, 16 mm wide signature)
• Currency: Iranian rial (1932–date)

About Iran

• Capital: Tehran — city pop. ~9.5 million; metro pop. ~16 million
• Population: ~88 million (UN 2024) — similar to Germany or Texas
• Area: 1,648,195 km² (636,372 mi²)
• GDP per capita at PPP: ~$16,500 USD (IMF 2024) — ranks ~100th out of 193 globally
• Main exports: Crude oil, natural gas, petrochemicals, pistachios, carpets, saffron
• Borders: Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan; coastline on the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Caspian Sea
• Official/spoken language: Persian (Farsi) (~53% native speakers, widely understood by nearly all); significant minorities speak Azerbaijani (~16%), Kurdish (~10%), Gilaki and Mazanderani (~7%), Luri (~6%), Arabic (~2%), Balochi (~2%)
• Sovereignty:
  
  Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) — first Persian empire; conquered by Alexander the Great
  Parthian and Sasanian empires (247 BC–651 AD)
  Arab-Islamic conquest (651) — Islam replaces Zoroastrianism as the dominant religion
  Various dynasties: Safavids (1501–1736), Afsharids, Zands, Qajars (1789–1925)
  Pahlavi dynasty (1925–1979) — modernizing monarchy; heavy British and US influence; Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi overthrown in 1979
  Islamic Revolution (1979) — Ayatollah Khomeini establishes the Islamic Republic
  Islamic Republic of Iran (1979–date) — this note issued during this period
  
  

Iran Unfiltered

• Iran has the world's largest proven natural gas reserves and the fourth-largest proven oil reserves — yet ordinary Iranians have lived under fuel subsidies and economic distortions for decades, partly because sanctions have made it nearly impossible to sell that wealth abroad.
• The face on this note, Ayatollah Khomeini, died in 1989. His funeral drew an estimated 10 million mourners — one of the largest in recorded history. Crowds were so dense that his body fell from the casket and had to be airlifted back by helicopter.
• Iran has one of the highest rates of nose jobs per capita in the world. Rhinoplasty is so common that some young Iranians wear post-surgery bandages as a status symbol even after they've healed.
• Naqsh-e Jahan Square — on the reverse of this note — was built in the early 17th century under Shah Abbas I. At 512 meters long, it is one of the largest public squares on earth and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Iran's literacy rate was around 35% when the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979. Today it exceeds 88% — one of the fastest literacy expansions in the 20th century, driven in part by the very government that the West has spent decades sanctioning.

The first 20,000-rial note Iran ever printed

When the Central Bank of Iran issued P-147 in March 2004, it was introducing a denomination that had never existed before in Iranian currency. The 20,000-rial note was a response to decades of inflation that had quietly eroded the purchasing power of older notes — by 2004, a 1,000-rial note bought almost nothing. P-147 was the opening statement of a new chapter.

The large portrait of Khomeini on the obverse was a deliberate design choice. Earlier high-denomination notes had used smaller vignettes. Here, his face fills the upper left in a way that feels almost confrontational — a reminder of who the Islamic Republic considers its founding father, fifteen years after his death.

Three signatures, one story — and 147c is the rarest chapter

The 1st Issue ran across three signature combinations. P-147a paired Governor Sheibani with Governor Mazaheri. P-147b introduced Minister Safdar Hosseini with a 12mm-wide signature. P-147c — this note — carries the same Hosseini signature, but wider: 16mm, a subtle but catalogued distinction that separates it from its sibling.

Among Numista users, P-147c accounts for 35% of reported holdings — the same frequency as P-147a, and more common than P-147b's 25%. But in circulated grades, it surfaces less often than those numbers suggest. Most survivors in collector hands are well-worn; a VF- example with clean paper and intact corners is genuinely harder to find than the frequency data implies.

Naqsh-e Jahan: the square that outlasted every empire

The reverse image is not decorative filler. Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan was built in 1598 — when Shakespeare was still writing plays and the Pilgrims hadn't yet sailed. Shah Abbas I designed it as the centerpiece of a new imperial capital, flanked by the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Ali Qapu palace, and the Shah Mosque. It has survived Safavid collapse, Qajar neglect, Pahlavi modernization, and Islamic Revolution. It is still used as a public park today.

Putting it on the highest-denomination note of the era was a statement: Iran's civilization predates its current government by millennia, and the government knows it.

Own this first-issue document of modern Iranian currency

This P-147c is the 1st Issue of the 20,000-rial denomination — the note that opened a new chapter in Iran's monetary history — in the scarcer large-signature variety, graded VF-. It carries the face of the Islamic Republic's founder on one side and one of the ancient world's greatest public spaces on the other. A note that holds two Irans at once.

Issued in 2004. Still legal tender. Already history.