1 Līrat / Livre AUB - Main Gate

Issued as part of Banque du Liban's ongoing commemorative series celebrating Lebanese universities, this piece honors the American University of Beirut, founded in 1866 by American Protestant missionaries as the Syrian Protestant College. The institution survived Ottoman suspicion, two world wars, and a civil war that left its campus — situated directly on the Green Line — caught between militia-held zones for fifteen years.

By 2016, the Lebanese pound had been pegged to the US dollar at 1,507.5 since 1997, a monetary arrangement that would catastrophically unravel within three years of this coin's issue.