50 Ghirshā / Piastres Essai

Lebanon's 1929 coinage essays were produced under the French Mandate authority, which had administered the territory since 1920 following the collapse of Ottoman rule. The Mandate government commissioned pattern and essai strikes through the Paris Mint to establish a new monetary framework for Greater Lebanon — a state whose borders France itself had drawn just nine years earlier. Essais of this type were struck in limited numbers for official approval purposes and rarely entered commerce at all.

Lec#39 confirms this as a Leconte-catalogued piece, a reference that serious collectors of French colonial and mandate coinage treat as authoritative for these trial issues.