Piasters
Piaster is the name of an old Spanish currency coin of great value. It was a designation of the peso , the eight reales coin. The coin and its denomination spread through trade relations in the Arab and North African Mediterranean region . There the designation was then also transferred to other large silver coins. The large silver coins of Italian states were also called piastra (from Italian piastra = metal plate). So the end of the 16th century were first in the Papal States marked piastres.
King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway also had piasters minted for the Danish East India Company from 1624 . King Christian VII of Denmark-Norway also minted piasters in 1771, which are similar to the Spanish piasters, but have the legend "GLORIA EX AMORE PATRIA". In English-speaking countries they were called the pillar dollar or Greenland pillar dollar ; The latter was an absurd name as the coin had no connection with Greenland.
The currency designation piastres (abbreviation: PT. Or PS ) was also used in the former Spanish America and in the Ottoman Empire . Even Egypt , the Lebanon and Jordan use this currency name (in the national language Arabic قرش qirsch , pluralقروش qurūsch ), but as a currency sub- unit for the Egyptian or Lebanese pound and the Jordanian dinar . A hundred piasters make up one Egyptian pound and 1 piaster was previously divided into 10 millièmes . Piasters were also issuedin Morocco , Tunisia and Cyprus . Theexchange rate against the mark, establishedunder the gold standard, was 5.715 per mark for the Turkish piasters and 4.83 for the Egyptian piasters. 1 lira (= 100 gold piastres) was equivalent to 18.45 marks.
Piastre is the French name for this coin. From 1880 onwards, France issued trade coins based on the US trade dollar in Indochina under this name . The Canadian dollar is sometimes still called that in Québec , as is the US dollar in the French-speaking part of Louisiana ( Acadiana ), in Cajun French .
Papal States 1690: Piasters, Pope Alexander VIII.
Egypt 1840: 100 piastres, Sultan Abdülmecid I.
Cyprus 1901: 36 piasters, Edward VII.
Danish-Norwegian piasters from 1777 minted in Kongsberg
Individual evidence
- ↑ 1 piaster ( Memento of the original from February 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Norwegian)
- ↑ Helmut Kahnt, Bernd Knorr: Old dimensions, coins and weights. A lexicon. Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1986, licensed edition Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-411-02148-9 , p. 375.
- ↑ See: List of exchange rates (gold standard)
- ^ Carl Otto: The house secretary. Berlin 1913, p. 485, 3rd cover page
