Syrian pound
currency
The Syrian pound, known locally as the Syrian lira, (Arabic: الليرة السورية, romanized: al-Līra as-Sūriyyah; abbreviation: LS or SP in Latin, ل.س in Arabic, historically also £S, and £Syr; ISO code: SYP) is the official currency of Syria. It is issued by the Central Bank of Syria. The pound is nominally divided into 100 piastres (قرش qirsh, plural قروش qurūsh in Arabic, abbreviated to p.). Only banknotes are currently issued.
Before 1947, the Arabic inscription of the word "qirsh" was spelled with the initial Arabic letter غ, after which the word began with ق. Until 1958, banknotes were issued with Arabic on the obverse and French on the reverse. Since 1958, English has been used on the reverses, hence the three different names for this currency. Coins used both Arabic and French until independence, then only Arabic.
History
French mandate
During the period when Syria was a part of the Ottoman Empire, which lasted about 400 years, the Ottoman pound was its main currency. Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the placing of Syria under a mandate (French occupation), the Egyptian pound was used in the territories under French and British mandates, including Lebanon, Transjordan and Palestine.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q240468. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947 and 1958.
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This entry incorporates text from “Syrian pound” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.