Catalog
5 Livres Turques
| Issuer | Dette Publique Ottomane |
|---|---|
| Year | 1915 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Red-brown and green note with an elaborate arabesque guilloche border framing the central field. The Ottoman tughra appears at the top centre within a cartouche, flanked by the denomination numeral '5' in each corner. The main text panel in Ottoman Turkish calligraphy carries the state title 'Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniyye' and the issue date '30 Mart 1331', with the serial number printed twice in black below the central vignette. The imprint 'Giesecke & Devrient' is visible at the lower left margin. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Reverse printed in red-brown on plain paper with a central panel of dense Ottoman Turkish text setting out the note's legal tender provisions, surmounted by a large denomination numeral '5' to the left. The composition is framed by a series of ornate arabesque cornerpiece vignettes and a continuous floral guilloche border. A manuscript-style signature of the authorising official appears beneath the text block. |
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| Comments |
The Dette Publique Ottomane — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was a multi-power European financial body established in 1881 to manage Ottoman sovereign debt after the empire's 1875 default. That a German printing firm was producing Ottoman emergency currency by 1915 reflects the war's immediate practical reality: with Britain and France now enemies, the established route to Western European printers was severed, and Germany became the natural alternative under the wartime alliance.
Giesecke & Devrient had the technical capacity, and Leipzig had the political clearance. The OPDA itself was by then largely a fiction of its peacetime self, with Allied members effectively expelled from its governance.