"كتيّب بلاد الرافدين. المجلد I. ١٩١٨" [‎٢‎٣‎٣] (٥٦٨/٢٤٢)

CHAPTER XIII
CUKRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
Currency and Exchange
Baghdad and Basra
Turkish Currency.— Before the war the Turkish coinage in Irak
was not enough for the needs of the country and had to be supple
mented by foreign coins, chiefly Indian and Persian. Since 1914
the circulation of Turkish coins in the area occupied by the British
has become unimportant, the principal currency being the Indian
coinage and notes introduced by the Expeditionary Force. In April
1^17 it was reported that Turkish coinage had been practically
eliminated, Turkish lirahs circulating in bazaars, but not to any
great extent.
The Turkish lirah, or pound (<£T), has an intrinsic value of about
18s. 0|d, and before the war was ordinarily taken as approximately
equivalent to 185. The par of exchange was 110 per cent. f£TI10 =
£100 sterling).
In the calculation of sums of money the is resolved into
piastres. In Irak before the war there were several different
valuations of the piastre, which were used in different kinds of
transactions. There are no piastre coins, although, as will be seen,
two kinds of piastre practically have equivalents in the coinage
(see (c) and (/) below). The varieties of the piastre were as follows :
{a) The ' gold ' piastre, at 100 to the lirah. This was used for the
payment of taxes and other transactions with State departments.
(6) The mejidiyeh piastre, at 102-6 to the lirah. The Imperial
Ottoman Bank kept its accounts partly in the gold piastre, partly in
the mejidiyeh.
(c) The silver or sagh piastre (also called at 108 to the
lirah. This is the piastre commonly used by merchants in transac
tions, partly owing to its close correspondence with the silver coin
known as the qurshsagh (value about 2d.), partly for convenience of