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The Banque de Syrie et du Liban was a French concessionary bank — its note-issuing privilege granted by mandate authority, not by any sovereign Lebanese or Syrian government. By 1942, the Free French had displaced Vichy control over the Levant following the Syria-Lebanon campaign of 1941, and the currency apparatus came with the territory. This note was printed by the Banque de France in Paris, which is worth pausing on: Paris was under German occupation when this series was produced, raising genuine questions about the logistics of getting plates and paper to the presses at the time.

R. Soriano's designer credit appears in the margin — a name associated with several Banque de France-adjacent colonial issues of the period.