5 Centimes

Draâ El Mizan is a small market town in the Kabyle foothills, roughly 80 kilometers southeast of Algiers. During the First World War, the collapse of small-denomination coinage across France and its territories drove hundreds of French communes and chambers of commerce to issue their own emergency paper — necessité notes. Algeria was no exception, and municipal issues of this kind proliferated between 1914 and 1920.

The Department of Alger attribution places administrative responsibility squarely, though the actual printing was almost certainly local or regional. At 5 centimes, this is among the smallest denominations such communes bothered to issue — a reflection of just how completely fractional metal had vanished from daily trade.