1 Livre

The Banque Impériale Ottomane — jointly founded by British and French capital in 1863 — held the exclusive right to issue banknotes throughout the Ottoman Empire, a privilege that made it functionally the empire's central bank despite being majority foreign-owned. This 1873 issue arrived during a period of severe fiscal strain: the Porte had been borrowing heavily on European markets since the Crimean War, and paper currency was viewed with deep suspicion by a population accustomed to metallic coinage.

Acceptance was never smooth. Anatolian markets in particular resisted Ottoman banknotes well into the 1880s, and surviving circulated examples from this series often show heavy handling concentrated at the folds — evidence of reluctant but repeated use in urban commercial settings.