Sultan Mohammed V had been exiled by the French in 1953, but the move, if anything, caused the long-running pro-independence violence in Morocco to intensify. The French could see the end of their Moroccan enterprise approaching, and invited Mohammed V back into the country in November, 1956.
It must have been quite personally satisfying—to have been an exile one moment, and then some few months later, to have found himself pictured on 2,000,000 big silver coins.
The large mintage suggests a coin with a business as well as a celebratory purpose, and indeed, these 500-franc coins were additions to a coinage that already included circulating silver values of 100- and 200-francs.
With the coinage reform of 1960, these 500-franc pieces would have been the equivalent of a 5-dirham piece.
I don’t know whether Rick ever returned to his Café in Casablanca, but if he did, and if he had managed to stay in business a dozen or more years into the postwar, I’ll bet a few of these big 500-franc pieces would have gotten plunked down at the bar—maybe by old friends returning to reminisce.
v.
