Money in the Levant

Abstract

It is not practicable to give a full account here of the complicated currency arrangements which served the eighteenth-century Levant,¹ but the salient features are fairly simple. The unit of account used by foreign merchants in the Levant (except in Egypt) was the dollar. In principle this was a Turkish piastre containing six drachms of silver; but this piastre, first issued in 1690, was based on the European dollar, and was itself produced only in small quantities. The effective unit of all business, therefore, was the European dollar; the Dutch rix-dollar or a debased copy of it, called the lion dollar in the Turkish dominions after the Lion of Zealand which appeared on its face. It was a massive silver coin, about the size of the English crown piece. Lion dollars had first come into Turkey in large quantities after 1669; they became popular and widely acceptable there, so that presently various princely mints in Germany and Italy began to manufacture imitations specially for export to Turkey, lowering the silver content to make the job worth while. The lion dollar weighed nine drachms, but the debased specimens which circulated in the eighteenth century contained just over six drachms of silver.¹

I am trying to get bills on Stamboul to be negotiated at Cyprus, and have already advised the gentlemen there that we should be concerned in their silk, and have given Messrs. Lupart & Lee [factors in Cyprus] commissions as far as 3000 on your account if to be purchased, at I 1/2.… In case I find their silk cheaper than here or at other scales, shall increase your concern that way, though I am much put to it to make them remittances, bills being very scarce and demand 6 1/2% cambio for French bills, and to send money it will be attended with a risque and charge; however if I can’t get bills sufficient I must send money in the best manner I can.

stratton to arthur radcliffe, 7 july 1735