1 Livre Syrienne

By 1949, Syria had been independent for three years, yet the Banque de Syrie et du Liban — a French concessionary institution — was still issuing currency for the country. The arrangement was deeply resented in Damascus, and negotiations to establish a fully Syrian central bank were already underway. This note was printed during that liminal period, when French financial control was effectively on borrowed time.

Syria broke from the joint currency system entirely in 1950, making the 1949 issues among the last produced under this structure. P#63 survives with some frequency, but genuinely uncirculated examples are harder to place than the catalog suggests.