An Overview of the French Protectorate Coinage of Morocco - Part 1

With the treaty of Fez in 1912, France made Morocco a protectorate. The country was nominally autonomous, but essentially under direct French rule. As part of their protectorate, the French produced coinage for use in Morocco.

This coinage can be broken into 4 basic series. The first is that coined under the sultanate of Yusuf, who reigned from 1921 to 1927. In 1921, coins were minted in Paris and had no privy mark. In 1924, coins were minted at Poissy with the thunderbolt privy mark (which can be found under the denomination). Coins from this series are generally found in lower grades.

The designs of the Moroccan coinage are generally very intricate, and quite attractive. The coins are very one dimensional, however. That is, all of the devices are at exactly the same height off the fields. This makes grading very difficult, because there are no high points on which wear will first occur. Its interesting to note that on the coinage of Yusuf, there are no dates on any of the coins.

The star is an important symbol on Moroccan coinage. Nearly every Moroccan coin has a star of some sort on it - but you'll notice three main types of stars on the coinage shown below. The first might be a little surprising: the Star of David. Morocco is home to a very large Jewish population, hence the appearance of the Jewish star on the coinage of a traditionally Muslim country. On other coinage, you'll note the 8 pointed star which is a frequent motif in Muslims art, the Rub el Hizb. You can see this on the denomination sides of the 50 centimes and 1 franc coins. Finally, the 5 pointed star is a symbol both of Islam and the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire never fully conquered Morocco, but parts of eastern Morocco (such as Oudja) were under Ottoman control.

The key to this series is the 25 centimes with both thunderbolt and torch privy marks, shown third below. It was minted in 1924 at Poissy. These coins are very difficult to find!

Tune in soon for more Moroccan coinage!

 

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i don't collect 'em, but I enjoyed both the read and the view. Thanks for an interesting and informative post Physics-fan......

 

Question - the coin I have I believe is like the next to last one (no bolt on the 1 franc side) I know nothing of these coins, but have this one from an accumulation of family stuff. Can you tell me when they were made? Are they common or hard to come by?

Thanks!!

Lew

 

Sure Lew. The 1 franc with no privy mark was minted in 1921. It is very hard to come by in AU or higher grade; below EF they are relatively common. I would probably call mine EF+. Even in higher grades, these still aren't very valuable.

 

I'll just go ahead and add future parts to this thread rather than making new threads as I had originally planned, since this seems to be a somewhat less than popular subject.

With the death of his father Yusef, Mohammed V took the throne of Morocco. His reign was turbulent, as was his fathers, with increasingly frequent resistance to the French.

The first series of coinage of Muhammed V is what I call the “classic silver”. These were 5, 10, and 20 franc coins issued in 1927 and 1933. The 1927 coinage (dates 1347 in the Hijrah calendar) has a much lower mintage, and is correspondingly difficult to locate in attractive condition. I had the most difficulty locating the 1347 10 franc coin, although the mintage of the 1347 20 franc coin is only 177,000 (compared to the rest of the mintages, which range from 1.6 to 5 million). These coins are very rarely found in Uncirculated condition.

The uniform design across the three denominations makes for a very attractive presentation. Notice the presence of the Rub el Hizb on the reverse that we discussed in Part 1 of this overview.

 

Those are some great examples. Moroccan coinage is very artistic, and symmetrical. I have only a few coins from this era. Thanks for posting them.

 

These coins were all minted under the reign of Sultan Mohammed V, as were the previous part. In my collection, I have chosen to break the coins into four distinct sections according to the era in which they were minted. While Krause mixes them all up, if you arrange them by KM number, you will notice they fall into four blocks. This block was minted from 1945-1947 (AH1364-1366). The coins are dated in the Hijrah calendar I mentioned in the previous part.

This third part is generally very similar in appearance to the previous part. The designs will look very familiar, with all of the same symbology. The main difference is now we have transitioned to base metals – either copper nickel, or an interesting aluminum brass alloy. This metal is generally unattractive, and when worn or toned, takes on a darker brownish color. Even uncirculated pieces like the 50 centimes and 1 franc shown here will tone brownish on the high points.

These coins are not difficult to find if you are looking for average, circulated pieces (honestly, like most of mine here). However, if you are looking for choice uncirculated pieces, such as the 10 francs, it will be a test. Luster is generally rather weak on all of these pieces, so finding lustrous, well struck, spot free gems is going to be a challenge! Luckily, there are only six coins in this section.


















Stay tuned for the conclusion, part 4 - coming soon!

 

This fourth part is interesting for several reasons. They are generally by far the most available, most affordable, and can be found in the highest grades. They share many of the same very attractive designs, especially the 5 and 50 franc coins. The coins in this part were minted from 1370 to 1376 – and it is interesting to note that many of them are dually dated with both AH and AD dates (1950-1956). This part also contains some of the highest denominations.

The three highest denominations are once again in silver, which is my favorite coin metal. Some of the lower denominations are in aluminum, the others are aluminum bronze. The silver used in Moroccan coins is generally not coin silver, with the exception of the 500 franc coin. Coin silver is 0.900 fine silver. The silver coins in part 2 are all 0.6800 fine, and the 100 and 200 franc coins shown here are 0.7200 fine. In lower grades (below VF+) these 100 and 200 franc coins are not worth much more than bullion, so be aware that they are not standard coin silver. The other implication of this is that these coins will all tone differently than standard US silver coins. If placed in an album or envelope, they will take on different colors at different rates than 0.900 silver. I was fortunate enough to find a very attractively toned 200 franc coin for my collection.

By far the most enigmatic coin of the French Colonial Morocco set is the 100 francs minted in silver, of the same style as the 20 francs shown below. Krause says 10 million were minted, but almost all of them were melted – only 100 are now known. I have only seen one, but never in person. The one I saw was listed on Ebay about 10 years ago, and I still remember it because it is the scarcest coin of this era. Alas, I did not have the money then, and have never seen another. It is listed in Krause as Y#A54.

The mintages of most of the coins in this part are very high. Although Morocco regained its sovereignty in 1956 after years of mounting civil unrest, these coins continued to be minted continuously without a change of date until 1974 when they were replaced with a new coinage. Very high grade, nearly prooflike specimens of the 1-50 franc coins were included in mint sets. Several of the coins shown below came from these sets.

Well, this concludes our tour of the French coinage for the Moroccan protectorate. I hope you enjoyed the coins, the designs, and a bit of the stories. These are very beautiful coins, but most of them are also inexpensive and easy to find. Enjoy!

 

I have to strongly disagree with this theory!

What is known today almost exclusively as the Mogen David or Jewish Star was formerly widely known as the Seal of Solomon (Suleyman):

سليماخاتم ن​

and as such was a common Muslim decorative device. It is that Muslim context, not its symbolism in Jewish culture, which explains its use on Moroccan coinage.

 

Hontonai, thank you for pointing that out to me. This was very recently pointed out on the NGC boards as well. I had not heard this before - but I'm always learning something new! Thanks for the info!

 

I have this one...

 

Way Cool

 

Those are some great coins, really like the toner, and good explanation of the distinct series. I was not aware of the lightning bolt privy mark before, very nice.

I agree with hontonai on the Solomon's Seal, at any rate its use was originally pagan. The 6-pointed star was changed to a 5-pointed star on the Moroccan flag at some point. The five pointed star in the Islamic world can be used to symbolize the five pillars of Islam, that is, five obligations that are central to the muslim faith.

 

"Empire Cherifien" refers to the sherif dynasty which has ruled Morocco since the 1600's.

 

Great coins! I had the pleasure of visiting Morocco for 3 weeks in January. I can tell you that these coins are nonexistant there now. These are some great coins and I hope to build myself a collection like those one day.

 

Nice information and coins. Thanks for the information that was totally new to me. :thumb:

 

Very interesting post. I've never seen any coins from Morocco before in my life, so I found it interesting.

I really like the ornate, early designs.

May I ask why you chose to collect this series? I have never seen anyone reference collecting Morocco before!

 

Thanks for the compliments Billy! I sort of stumbled upon collecting Morocco quite accidentally. It all started when I was in middle school, and won a small lot of foreign coins on Ebay, sort of a grab bag type thing. There was a 1366 10 Francs in there, one of the ornate designs, and it caught my interest. So I started getting the rest of the Moroccan French Protectorate coins. And then, when I finished Morocco, I began collecting the rest of the French colonies. This is a very long-term project.

 

Very cool! I got started on a set of 1955 British Caribbean Territories Eastern Group coinage in pretty much the same way, via a bulk lot. I have about 1/3rd of them now