World coins chat: Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked (Liechtenstein is the only other country with that geographic status) in Central Asia. It is located south of Kazakhstan and north of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and has a population of 31 million. The Uzbek language is related to Turkish, and similar to Kazakh, Turkmen and Azeri.


Flag of Uzbekistan

The Uzbek lands were the location from where the Mongol Timurid empires had their capital Samarkand in the 13th century. Later the Khanate of Bukhara was located there until the Russian Empire absorbed the region in the second half of the 19th century. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Uzbekistan became a separate constituent republic (an SSR) and Russian influence increased.

With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 Uzbekistan became an independent republic. It has managed to stay a relatively stable country and with an economy mostly focused on mining and basic resources. The capital Tashkent was the 3rd largest city in the USSR and Uzbekistan is home to historic sites such as Khiva and Samarkand, which attracts the more adventurous tourists.

Currency
Uzbekistan introduced the Som in 1994 to replace the Soviet/Russian Ruble at a rate of 100 to 1. Over the past 20 years, the Som has been suffering from chronic inflation and is managed by a crawling peg. There are currently 2600 Som in a USD.

Coins
In 1994, coins were introduced with values of 1 Tiyin to 50 Tiyin. In 1997 1, 5 and 10 Som coin were added to this series. These coins still have legends written in Cyrillic script. Uzbekistan switched to Latin script afterwards to align itself more with other Turkic languages.

In 2000, a new series of 1, 5 and 10 Som was introduced. The years after higher denomination circulating commemoratives were issued in denominations of 25 upto 500 Som.

The later Uzbek coins are somewhat hard to find. Due to inflation people mostly use banknotes, but even besides that coins are not used cery extensively in general in Uzbekistan.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/ouzbekistan-1.html

In the chaos that followed the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia and prior to the formation of the Uzbekistan SSR within USSR in October of 1924, the Bukhara and Khiva khanates (previously, protectorates of the Russian Empire), have had their own local Bolshevik-supported revolts and briefly existed as independent states. The latter produced their own coinage which you can find listed under Khiva on Numista, though the proper state name for that time period should be Khorezm People's Soviet Republic.
(https://en.numista.com/catalogue/index.php?r=khiva&c=&co=y&cno=y&cc=y&cn=y&cu=y&cat=y&mode=simplifie&p=1&e=&d=&km=&i=&v=&m=&a=&t=&dg=&w=&g=&f=)

Most coins in Central Asia are from Uzbekistan. But this Shaki is annoying... Azerbaijan doesn't look Central Asian.

Thanks for inspiring me to create a separate Central Asia topic. This Shaki within Central Asia looks pretty odd indeed.

Uzbekistan issued a new common coin series in 2018 with a 50, 100, 200 and 500 Som. With an exchange rate of 9,500 to the Euro those coins have limited buying power but they appear to be normal circulation coins.