10 Piastres

The République Syrienne notes of 1945 were issued during an acutely unstable transitional moment — France still nominally controlled the Levant under its mandate authority, yet Syrian political independence had been declared in 1941 and was being contested in the streets and in Paris simultaneously. The Banque de Syrie et du Liban, a French-chartered private institution, retained control of currency issuance even as the republic asserted sovereignty. This note exists precisely in that contradiction.

Pick 56C denotes a signature variety within the broader 56 series — the signature combinations on these notes track the successive administrations of a bank whose leadership was itself a political battleground between French and Syrian interests through the mid-1940s.