Date	Pick#	Denomination	Observations	Obverse	Reverse
2001	2	1/2 Dinar
Obverse Design: A weaver using a hand-loom Reverse Design: An aerial view of the plant of Aluminium Bahrain
1964	4	1 Dinar
Obverse Design: Dilmun seal Reverse Design: The Bahrain Monetary Agency headquarters.
1973	7	1/2 Dinar
Obverse Design: A weaver using a hand-loom Reverse Design: An aerial view of the plant of Aluminium Bahrain
1973	8	1 Dinar
Obverse Design: Dilmun seal Reverse Design: The Bahrain Monetary Agency headquarters.
1993	16	20 Dinars
Obverse Design: The Bab al Bahrain in Manama Reverse Design: The Ahmad al Fateh Islamic Centre. "Second Printing" See below for more details with regards to this note.
1996	17	1/2 Dinar
Obverse Design: A weaver using a hand-loom Reverse Design: An aerial view of the plant of Aluminium Bahrain
2001	18	1/2 Dinar
Obverse Design: A weaver using a hand-loom Reverse Design: An aerial view of the plant of Aluminium Bahrain
1998	19b	1 Dinar
Obverse Design: Dilmun seal Reverse Design: The Bahrain Monetary Agency headquarters.
1998	20b	5 Dinars
Obverse Design: The south-western tower of Riffa al-Sharqi Fort Reverse Design: Bahrain International Airport
1998	21b	10 Dinars
Obverse Design: A two-masted dhow under full sail Reverse Design: Aerial view of the customs and immigration island in the middle of the King Fahd causeway connecting Saudi Arabia with Bahrain.

The history of currency in Bahrain and the Bahrain Dinar
The Umayyad governors of Bahrain made the first coins of Bahrain during the eighth century, although for the next thousand years most coins in use in Bahrain were either imported or locally struch in imitation of foreign coins. British gold sovereigns and the silver Maria Theresa Thalers were widely used well into the 1960's even after local banknotes and coins were long since established. The Indian rupee was the official currency of Bahrain up until 1959, when it was replaced at a 1:1 ratio by the Gulf rupee issued by the Reserve Bank of India which was created for use in the Persian Gulf to reduce the drain on India's foreign currency reserves.  The original Indian rupee  was divided into 16 Annas but when the Gulf rupee was introduced in was decided to make it divisible by 100 Naye Paisa. The Gulf rupee notes looked similar to the then current Indian rupee notes but were different in colour.

India devalued its' currency in 1966 which affected the value of the Gulf rupee as well, this intern forced countries using the gulf rupee to look for an alternative or introduce their own currencies. Bahrain chose to introduce its' own currency in 1965, the Bahraini Dinar which replaced the Gulf rupee at a rate of 1 Dinar was eqaul to 10 Gulf rupees. The new currency was divided into 1000 fils.

Bahrain's first banknotes were issued by the Bahrain Currency Board from 1965 until 1973 and from 1973 till present the Bahrain Monetary Agency has played this role.

Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had an interchangeability agreement for banknotes starting in January 1978. The rates of interchange were 10 Qatari riyals = 1 Bahrain dinar = 10 United Arab Emirates dinars, up to 5,000 Qatari riyals, 500 Bahrain dinars, or 5,000 United Arab Emirates dinars. The agreement fell apart in May 1979 after Qatar revalued its currency.

Banknotes in Bahrain currently in circulation come in denominations of 1/2 Diner or 500 fils, 1 Dinar, 5 Dinars, 10 Dinars and 20 Dinars. Coins come in denominations of 500 fils, 100 fils, 50 fils, 25 fils and 10 fils.

The Bahraini Dinar is locally written as BD and prices are normally written to three decimal places as the currency is divided into 1000. Bahrain's currency ISO code is BHD.  The Bahrain Dinar is currently the third most valuable currency unit in the world after the Kuwaiti Dinar and the Maltese Lira.

The unauthorized second printing of the Bahraini 20 Dinar banknote
A group of confidence men passing themselves to be representatives of the Bahrain Monetary Agency
illegally ordered these 20 Dinar notes from the Argentinian security printer Ciccone Calcografica. More then 75,000 of these fake 20 Dinar of 1.5 million Dinars worth of the dubious notes were presented for payment at various branches of the Bahrain Monetary Agency in the United Arab Emirates from 4 to 11 June 1998.  At this time the notes were discovered to be slightly different from the notes currently in circulation. The Bahrain Monetary Agency imeadiatly contacted their printer Thomas de la Rue in London to find out if there had been any changes to the plates used to print the 20 Dinar notes, which of course Thomas de la Rue said there were none. The genuine 20 Dinar notes were consequently withdrawn from circulation on 30 July 1998.  The Bahrain promptly replaced the purple 20 Dinar note with a peach coloured version of the same design.

 
The Argintinian notes can be distinguished from the originals by the spacing between the first two Arabic letters of the horizontal serial number found in the bottom right of the front of the note and by the difference in shading in the panel behind the name in Arabic of the Bahrain Monetary Agency on the front.

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Page created:     6 June 2006
Last Update:      12 June 2006

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