AFGHANISTAN. Republic. Brass Clad Steel 25 Pul. Llantrisant, SH1352 (1973). KM-975.

This brass clad steel 25 Pul was struck at the Royal Mint in Llantrisant, Wales in SH1352 (1973 AD), during the Republic of Afghanistan under President Mohammad Daoud Khan. The SH1352 date places this coin in the founding year of that republic — Daoud Khan overthrew his cousin King Mohammad Zahir Shah in a bloodless coup on 17 July 1973, ending over two centuries of monarchical rule in Afghanistan and establishing a republic with himself as president. This coin was struck in the very year that transformation took place.

Daoud Khan's republic represented a significant departure from the Kingdom era — politically, ideologically, and monetarily. The new government sought to modernize Afghanistan's institutions while maintaining an independent foreign policy that played Soviet and American interests against each other. The coinage of the Republic era continued the practice established under the Kingdom of contracting production to foreign mints, and the Royal Mint at Llantrisant remained the supplier for this and related denominations.

Catalogued as KM-975, this type was struck in brass clad steel to a standard weight of 2.5 grams at 19mm diameter. The 25 Pul represented one quarter of an Afghani in the Republican monetary system. For the collector of Afghan coinage, this is a historically charged coin — a small denomination that marks the exact transitional year between the Kingdom and the Republic, struck abroad in the same year the Afghan state changed its fundamental character.