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5 Piastres
| Issuer | Ottoman Public Debt Administration (Düyun-u Umumiye) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1914 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 5 Kurush (0.05) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
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| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | دولت عثمانيه ٤ شطر ١٣٣٢ ٥ غروش 5 PIASTRES SÉRIE 1 |
| Reverse description | The reverse, printed on plain light blue-grey paper, shows the ghost impression of the obverse design visible through the thin note paper, with no distinct printed design elements of its own — consistent with the simple single-sided or lightly backed printing characteristic of this wartime emergency issue. |
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| Comments |
The Düyun-u Umumiye — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was itself a creature of foreign financial control, established in 1881 after the Ottoman state defaulted on its sovereign debt. By 1914, it functioned as a semi-autonomous body answerable to European creditor nations, which makes its role as a note-issuing authority genuinely anomalous: these are effectively paper instruments of a debt-collection agency, not a central bank.
The timing matters. Issued in the opening months of World War One, P#96 appeared as the regular Ottoman treasury struggled with wartime liquidity. Small-denomination fractional notes like this one filled an acute gap in everyday transactional currency as silver coinage disappeared from circulation almost immediately after mobilization.