The Lebanese pound

How a mandate currency became Lebanese

Lebanon and Syria were Ottoman before the First World War, and the Turkish pound was their legal tender until the empire fell in September 1918 and a sterling-based Egyptian currency, issued by a private British institution, replaced it. France then took both territories under its mandate and handed a commercial bank, the Banque de Syrie, the right to issue a new currency for them.

Renamed the Banque de Syrie et du Liban, the bank received the sole right in January 1924 to issue a Lebanese-Syrian currency based on the French franc, for fifteen years. In 1937 the privilege was extended by twenty-five years so that the bank could issue a separate Lebanese currency, which stayed interchangeable with the Syrian one in either state. Banque du Liban's own history calls the result a disguised French franc until 1941, when the link moved to sterling after the defeat of France and the Allied invasion of Lebanon.

Lebanon became independent in 1943 and in 1948 agreed with France to separate its currency from the franc, a step confirmed by a law of 24 May 1949. A Council of Money and Credit drafted the Code of Money and Credit and the rules of a future central bank.

Banque du Liban was established under that code on 1 April 1964. It took over the notes.

Why the piastre disappeared

The pound was divided into 100 piastres, qirsh in Arabic, and Arabic grammar gives the word four different forms depending on the number in front of it. The civil war of 1975 to 1990 ended it. Banque du Liban still describes the pound as divided into 100 piastres, and adds that inflation has eliminated them.

Coins were issued from 1952 to 1986. Then none came until 1994, when the current series appeared. The bank says those coins are still officially in circulation, though the low values have become rare in daily payments. Higher notes came in the 1980s and 1990s as inflation ate the currency's value. The bank gives 100,000 pounds as its highest note in circulation, and in 2025 parliament approved notes of 500,000, 1,000,000, 2,000,000 and 5,000,000 pounds.

What the official rate has meant since the crisis

From December 1997 to January 2023 the pound was fixed at 1,507.50 to the US dollar. After the crisis that became visible in October 2019, dollars at that rate were mostly unavailable. A parallel market grew up beside it. On 1 February 2023 the central bank reset the official rate to 15,000 pounds, the first change to it in twenty-five years.

Several rates then ran at once. Banque du Liban launched Sayrafa, an electronic platform meant to record every foreign exchange transaction in pounds, in June 2021, and from 1 February 2022 its rate applied to card payments. Depositors meanwhile held what the economist Dan Azzi called lollars: dollar balances frozen in Lebanese banks that could be withdrawn only in pounds, at a reduced rate and within limits.

How the notes are laid out

The Banque de Syrie et du Grand-Liban issued the first notes in 1925, from 25 piastres to 100 pounds, and after 1945 the notes said Lebanese pounds, livre libanaise, to tell them apart from Syrian money.

A decree of 1 August 1963 gave Banque du Liban the sole right to issue notes, with Arabic on the front and French on the back. The French side uses Western Arabic numerals and the Arabic side Eastern Arabic numerals, and the serial number is printed in both scripts.