Ah so it seems we’ll be getting a new 50 Dinar banknote in Tunisia… (I know this news is about a week old, but I just found out about it.)

The Governor of Tunisia’s Central Bank (BCT), Taoufik Baccar, announced that the bank will issue a new 50 dinar banknote.

Baccar said that the new banknote will represent the literary scholar, Ibn Rachiq Al Kairouani, ten days following the launch of festivities celebrating Kairouan as Islamic Cultural Capital for 2009.

Mr Baccar who made the announcement during the international colloquium on “Numismatics and the history of money coins in Tunisia”, also said that the choice of the scholar to illustrate the banknote was in line with Tunisia’s rootedness in Arab Moslem sources.

Ibn Rachiq Al Kairouani (999-1063) who was born in Mhamdia near Tunis, was a poet, writer and literary critic. He is known for his magisterial “Al Umda”, a treatise of literary criticism in two volumes, written during the golden age of Arab culture.

There are currently three types of banknotes in circulation in Tunisia, ten dinar notes, twenty dinar notes and thirty dinar notes.

[Source: Tunisia Online News]

This actually makes monetary sense, especially with where prices are going; now if they’d only kill that damn stupid 30 Dinar note! I mean, what the hell were they thinking?! Someone must’ve been seriously drunk the day they came up with that.

It’s quite funny though how because Kairouan is the Islamic Cultural Capital this year, Tunisia is all of a sudden trying to revamp and present itself as a very Islamic country, very in touch with its Muslim roots and all, even inviting Sheikh Qaradawi (who has been very critical of Tunisia before) over.
It’s certainly very convincing, don’t you think? (Yeah right!)