5 Ghirsh / Piastre WW2 War Coinage, Pattern

Syria in 1941 was under Vichy French administration, and the brief window between the fall of France in 1940 and the Allied invasion of Syria in June 1941 created an acute coinage problem — supply lines from metropolitan France were severed, and the existing monetary system needed sustaining. Pattern pieces in aluminium from this period reflect emergency-era experimentation with base metals that were locally available and easy to strike without industrial infrastructure. The Allied campaign, which ended Vichy control by July 1941, likely killed any plans for full production.