Note 9 — 65. From Tripoli to Alexandria viâ Benghazi and Derna. (continued 5)
Reading edition
537In the following description the transcripts ö and ü have approximately the German value, or the French of eu and u respectively.
Money. The Turkish Pound (lira), worth about 23 fr. or 18s. 5d., is divided into 100 piastres. There are gold coins of ¼, ½, 1, 2½, and 5 pounds. The commonest coins are Silver Piastres (s. pias.; coins of 5, 10, and 20 s. pias.), but at the government, railway, and steamboat offices, in the tobacco-shops, and on the tramways they suffer a slight loss (5 s. pias. = 4¾, 10 s. pias. = 9½, 20 s. pias. = 19 piastres in gold). The piastre (worth 2⅒d.) is called Gurúsh in Turkish (grosi in Greek), the five-piastre piece is a Cheïrek (or simply ‘franc’), the twenty-piastre piece (about 3s. 6d.) is a Mejidieh. A piastre is divided into 40 parts called Paras; the commonest para-coins are the thinly silvered bronze Metalliks of 10 paras (about ½d.); there are others of 5, 20, 50, and 100 paras. New nickel coins of 1 pias., 20, 10, and 5 paras will in 1912 be brought into circulation.
A French or Greek silver franc passes in ordinary traffic for 4½ s. pias., and the Napoleon (the most popular of foreign coins) for 95 s. pias. (but the money-changers usually give 93 s. pias. only). The average exchange for an English sovereign is 120 s. pias.; for bank and circular notes the exchange is rather higher. French banknotes can be exchanged only at the banks. Small change, of which there is always a scarcity, is obtained at the banks (p. 539) or at the money-changers, the current rate of exchange being ascertained beforehand. Worn-out coins may be exchanged at the Banque Ottomane.
Accounts are still kept in the provinces in ‘bad (chürük) piastres’; of these there are silver coins worth 1¼, 2½, and 5 pias., and copper coins of 1¼ and 2½ pias.—The Turkish pound contains 178 bad piastres, the mejidieh 33, and the silver piastre 1⅔. A pound sterling is therefore worth about 209 bad piastres, a shilling about 10½, and a franc 8⅓.
Turkish Numbers: 1, bir; 2, ikí; 3, ütsh; 4, dört; 5, besh; 6, altí; 7, yedí; 8, sekíz; 9, dokuz; 10, on; 11, on bir; 20, yirmí; 25, yirmí besh; 30, otuz; 40, kirk; 50, elí; 100, yüz; 1000, bin. ‘Katsh pará’, how many paras? ‘Besh gurúsh’, five piastres.