5 Livres

The Banque de Syrie et du Grand-Liban was a French concessionary institution — nominally Lebanese and Syrian, in practice an arm of French Mandatory financial policy, with its capital largely held by the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. Notes of this 1935 series were issued under the gold-exchange peg to the French franc, a arrangement that left both territories exposed when France suspended convertibility during the Depression years.

The "M" suffix in the Pick reference denotes a specimen, which for this series were perforated and distributed to correspondent banks for authentication purposes. Genuine issued examples from 1935 are considerably harder to locate than the specimens.