½ Piastre Maadi; PoW Camp

Maadi, on the southern outskirts of Cairo, housed one of Egypt's principal prisoner-of-war facilities during the First World War under British administration. Camp scrip of this kind was issued to control internal purchasing — prisoners could not accumulate sterling or Egyptian currency, so camp-specific notes replaced it entirely within the compound economy. The ½ Piastre denomination reflects the small-scale transactions these notes were designed for: canteen goods, tobacco, basic sundries.

POW camp issues from Egypt are among the least-documented of the period. Record-keeping was inconsistent, surviving specimens are genuinely rare, and attribution is often complicated by the absence of serial numbers or printer's marks on the simpler denominations.