100 Livres

The Banque de Syrie was a French-controlled institution operating under the Mandate, and this 100 Livres belongs to the earliest years of that arrangement — the Livre syrienne having replaced the Egyptian pound as the territorial currency in 1920. Bradbury Wilkinson handled much of the prestige banknote printing for British and French colonial administrations alike during this period, which is why a note issued under French mandate authority came out of a London workshop with no particular contradiction at the time.

High-denomination notes from this inaugural series are genuinely rare in any condition. The political instability of the early Mandate period — including the Franco-Syrian War of 1920 — severely disrupted normal distribution channels.