1 Qirsh - Mehmed V

Mehmed V acceded to the Ottoman throne in 1909 following the Young Turk deposition of his brother Abdülhamid II — a political upheaval that reset the regnal year counting used on Ottoman-Egyptian coinage. Egypt at this point was nominally Ottoman but effectively under British occupation, a jurisdictional ambiguity that kept the khedival mint in Cairo operating under Istanbul's monetary authority while British advisors managed the broader economy. The qirsh denomination had been steadily debased over the preceding decades; the .833 fineness of this issue reflects a stabilization effort rather than the earlier higher-silver standards.