2 1/2 Livres

The Ottoman Public Debt Administration was not a bank but a foreign creditor body — established by the 1881 Muharrem Decree to manage Ottoman state debt repayment directly to European bondholders, with its own revenue streams from tobacco, salt, silk, and spirits taxes. By 1918 the empire was near collapse, and this note is a product of that desperation: with Allied naval blockades cutting Ottoman access to its traditional French printers, the Düyun-u Umumiye turned to wartime Berlin.

Bundesdruckerei — operating under the Reichsdruckerei name at this period — handled several late Ottoman emergency issues. The arrangement was as much a product of the German military alliance as it was a logistical solution.