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The Turkish lira, the French livre (until 1794), the Italian lira (until 2002), Lebanese pound and the pound unit of account in sterling (a translation of the Latin libra; the word "pound" as a unit of weight is still abbreviated as "lb.") are the modern descendants of the ancient currency.
Until the 1930s and the Turkish alphabet reform, the Arabic script was used on Turkish coins and banknotes, with پاره for para, قروش for kuruş and ليرا for lira (تورك ليراسي for 'Turkish lira'). In European languages, the kuruş was known as the piastre, whilst the lira was known as the livre in French and the pound in ...
In 1844, the Turkish gold lira was introduced as the new standard denomination. It was divided into 100 silver kuruş and the kuruş continued to circulate until the 1970s. Kuruş eventually became obsolete due to the chronic inflation in Turkey in the late 1970s. A currency reform on 1 January 2005 provided its return as 1 ⁄ 100 of the new lira.
Because of the chronic inflation experienced in Turkey from the 1970s through to the 1990s, the old lira experienced severe depreciation. Turkey has consistently had high inflation rates compared to developed countries: from an average of 9 lira per U.S. dollar in the late 1960s, the currency came to trade at approximately 1,650,000 lira per U.S. dollar in late 2001.
For the Turkish lira, the Turkish lira sign (U+20BA ₺ TURKISH LIRA SIGN) is used. The Lebanese lira uses £L (before numerals) or L.L. (after numerals) in Latin and ل.ل. in Arabic. The Syrian lira uses £S (before numerals) or L.S. (after numerals) in Latin and ل.س in Arabic.
The first territory in the Middle East to adopt the pound sterling unit of account was Cyprus.At the time of the occupation in 1878, for the purpose of paying the troops the British government instructed that a Turkish lira was to be rated at 9 ⁄ 10 of a pound sterling. [5]
[1] [2] The currency's symbol is ' £ ', a stylised form of the blackletter 'L' (from libra), crossed to indicate abbreviation. [ 3 ] The term was adopted in England from the weight [ a ] of silver used to make 240 pennies, [ 6 ] and eventually spread to British colonies all over the world.
At the end of the war in 1945 the sterling area remained the largest and most coherent currency bloc in the world, [citation needed] and it provided its members with freedom to settle payments in sterling anywhere within the area without exchange controls. Members enjoyed the benefits of stable exchange rates and permanent access to the ...