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500 Livres
| Issuer | Imperial Ottoman Bank (Banque Impériale Ottomane) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | P#107B |
| Obverse description | The entire face is covered in an intricate teal-green geometric and floral guilloche border pattern. At upper centre, the Imperial Ottoman tughra is printed within a decorative cartouche, flanked by the denomination numeral 500 in both Arabic-Eastern and Western numerals at left and right. A central ogival arch panel carries the bank title in Arabic script, the regnal year, and multi-line Ottoman Turkish text, with a circular seal medallion below; serial number C-004905 appears twice in the lower register. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | ٥٠٠ |
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| Comments |
The Imperial Ottoman Bank was a Franco-British joint-stock institution, not a Turkish state bank — it held the exclusive right to issue banknotes in Ottoman territory under concessions renewed periodically from 1863 onward. By 1918 the geopolitical situation had made printing in Paris or London unthinkable, so the contract went to the Reichsdruckerei in Berlin, the same facility producing currency for the German imperial government itself. That wartime alliance explains the otherwise incongruous sight of an Ottoman institution's paper being struck in the enemy capital of its founding shareholders.
The 1918 series, of which this 500 Livres is the highest denomination, circulated during the final collapse of Ottoman financial stability. Reichsdruckerei production is generally clean and technically precise, but postwar redemption was chaotic enough that survival of high-value notes in any consistent condition is uneven.