Libya's 1979 coinage was issued under the Jamahiriya government, Gaddafi's self-described "state of the masses" declared just two years earlier in 1977. The brass-clad steel construction reflects a pragmatic cost-reduction shift common across North African monetary systems during the late 1970s, as rising commodity prices made solid copper-nickel alloys increasingly expensive to strike in volume.
Libya's 1979 coinage was issued under the Jamahiriya government, Gaddafi's self-described "state of the masses" declared just two years earlier in 1977. The brass-clad steel construction reflects a pragmatic cost-reduction shift common across North African monetary systems during the late 1970s, as rising commodity prices made solid copper-nickel alloys increasingly expensive to strike in volume.