Syrian pound
The Syrian pound (Arabic الليرة السورية al-līra as-sūriyya) is the currency of Syria. The pound is subdivided into 100 qirush (singular qirsh, piastres in English or French), although coins in qirsh are no longer issued.
The standard abbreviation for the Syrian pound is SYP. On 5 December 2005, the selling rate quoted by the Commercial Bank of Syria was 58.4 SYP to the US dollar. A rate of about 50 pounds to one dollar has been usual in the early 2000s, but the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations. The pound is not a hard currency, and there are restrictions on its export.
History
Before World War I, Syria was part of the Ottoman empire and the Turkish lira was the legal tender. Following the fall of the Ottoman empire and the placing of Syria under a mandate, the Egyptian pound was used in the states under French and British mandates, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. Upon taking Lebanon and Syria under its separate mandate, the French government sought to replace the Egyptian currency and granted a commercial bank, the Banque de Syrie (a French affiliate of the Ottoman Bank), the authority to issue a currency for states under its new mandate.
The pound (or livre as it was then known) was introduced in 1919 and was initially worth 20 French francs.
As the political status of Lebanon evolved, the Banque de Syrie, which was to act as the official bank for Lebanon and Syria, was renamed the Banque de Syrie et du Liban (BSL). The BSL issued the French franc based Lebanese-Syrian currency for 15 years starting in 1924. Two years before the expiration of the 15 year period, the BSL split the Lebanese-Syrian currency into two separate currencies that could still be used interchangeably in either state. In modern times, however, the currencies are separate, as evidenced by the fact that the Lebanese pound is 30 times weaker than the Syrian pound.
Until 1958, banknotes were issued with Arabic on the obverse and French on the reverse. After 1958, English has been used on the reverses, hence the three different names for this currency. Coins used both Arabic and French until Syrian independence, then only Arabic. A new series of banknotes was printed in 1998. Many of the old bills were redesigned and a new 1000 pound note was also added.
Trivia
The shape of the Syrian ten pound coin has been found to so resemble the Norwegian twenty kroner coin that it can fool vending machines, coins-to-cash machines, arcade machines, and any other coin-operated, automated service machine in the country. While hardly similar to the naked eye, machines are unable to tell the coins apart due to an almost identical weight and size.
As of February 16, 2006, ten Syrian Pounds converts to 1.30 NOK, or about 0.19 USD. 20 NOK converts to 2.96 USD, almost 15.6 times the value of the Syrian coin. While not easy to find in Norway, the Syrian coins are still used in automated machines there with such frequency that Posten Norge, the Norwegian postal service, decided to close many of their coins-to-cash machines on February 18, 2006, with plans to develop a system able to differentiate between the two coins. In the summer of 2005, a Norwegian man was sentenced to 30 days, suspended, for having used Syrian coins in arcade machines in the municipality of Bærum.[1]
