What Morocco Puts on Its Money

Take a 20-dirham note out of your wallet and hold it sideways to the light. The face is the King — Mohammed VI, in profile, looking left. To his right, a Moroccan door. Not a literal door from a specific city, but a composite. Horseshoe arch, geometric tilework, the shape every visitor learns to photograph in the first week. The note is purple. The denomination is in three scripts: Arabic, Tifinagh, and Latin numerals. Turn it over. The bridge spanning the page is the Hassan II Bridge, between Rabat and Salé, with the minaret of the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca rising in the distance. Two structures, two cities, one Hassan.

This is what the country chose to put in your hand.

The dirham was reintroduced in 1960, four years after independence. For half a century before that, Morocco had used the franc — the currency of the French protectorate — and the rebuild was deliberate. The new currency took its name from a coin that had circulated in the region for a thousand years, derived in turn from the Greek drachma. The continuity was the point. The franc was the interruption. The dirham was the return.

The current series was issued in 2013 and is being progressively replaced by a new series rolled out between 2023 and 2024. Both circulate together. The 50-dirham note is green. On the back: the Ouzoud Falls, a tapestry, an argan tree, and a falcon. The 100-dirham is brown and gold. On the back of the new version: the Mechouar Square in Laayoune, the Tiznit–Dakhla expressway, and the Tan-Tan Moussem festival — three images that locate the southern Sahara firmly inside the national self-image. The 200-dirham is blue. On the new 2024 version: the Mohammed VI cable-stayed bridge, the Mohammed VI Tower, the Marrakech-Menara airport. Each denomination is a thesis about what counts as Morocco.

The choices repay attention. There are no battles. No conquerors. The figures are kings, but the structures are infrastructure: a bridge, an airport, a highway, a university (the 20-dirham reverse features al-Qarawiyyin in Fes, the oldest continuously operating university in the world), a fortress (Aït-Ben-Haddou on the same note), a mosque, a festival. The country reads itself as a country of doors, water, distance covered, and things built. The arcades on every note are inspired by the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, the largest mosque in Africa, finished in 1993 — recent enough that some of its builders are still alive.

There is also what isn't there. No portraits of artists, scientists, or writers. No women — a familiar absence on most of the world's money, but worth noticing here, in a country whose oldest university was founded by a woman in 859 CE. The notes are issued by Bank Al-Maghrib in Rabat, and the design and production are entirely Moroccan, executed at Dar As-Sikkah, the central bank's in-house mint. The country prints its own self-portrait. It does not subcontract the choice.

The dirham is also one of the world's less freely traded currencies. It cannot legally leave Morocco — visitors are technically required to convert any unused dirhams back at the airport on departure, though enforcement is uneven. The exchange rate is pegged to a basket: 60% euro, 40% dollar, with a fluctuation band of ±5%. The Bank Al-Maghrib adjusted the weighting in 2015, raising the euro share to better reflect actual trade flows. The peg is a policy choice, not an accident. Morocco does not want a currency that floats. It wants a currency that stays where it is put.

Carry a few notes around for a few days and the design starts to organise the country for you. Door. Mosque. Bridge. Falls. Kasbah. University. Festival. Airport. The Sahara, the coast, the mountains, the imperial cities, the things finished, the things still being built. It is, among other things, the cheapest souvenir Morocco produces. Most travellers do not look at it.