The Libyan Dinar

The libyan dinar is the currency of Libya.

Its ISO 4217 code is "LYD". The dinar is subdivided into 1000 dirhams. It was introduced in 1971 and replaced the pound at par.

It is issued by the Central Bank of Libya, which also supervises the banking system and regulates credit. In 1972, the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank was established to deal with overseas investment. In 1971, banknotes were introduced in denominations of 0.25, 0.5, 1, 5 and 10 dinars. 20 dinar notes were added in 2002. On 27 August 2008, the Central Bank of Libya announced a new 50 dinar note and that was scheduled to enter circulation on 31 August 2008.

The note is in circulation and features Muammar al-Gaddafi on the obverse. The Libyan dinar is commonly called jni, IPA: [?ni] (western Libyan Dialect) or jneh [?neh] (eastern Libyan dialect). The official name dinar is rarely used outside official circles.

The official fractional unit dirham is never used in everyday talk. Garsh - a variant of the word qirsh - is used instead, with 1 garsh = 10 dirhams. One thousand dinars is stylishly called a kilo [ki:lu]. Similarly, five dinars notes and ten dinars notes are sometimes nicknamed, in younger generations male slang, faifa [fa:ifa] and tsena [tse:na] respectively, which are playful feminizations of the English words five and ten. Libyan currency is nicknamed by Libyans Omar El-Mokhtar after the Libyan freedom fighter who is featured on the obverse of the 10 dinar note. The currency in Libya has undergone many changes at times even had various currencies for different regions within the country. The Ottoman qirsh was used until 1844. In 1911, Italy took over and the Italian lira was used as currency during their reign.

1943 saw even more change as Libya was split into British and French territories. The French territories utilized Algerian francs as their currency while the British territories utilized lira that were issued by the British military. Again there was a change when Libya’s World War II associations led to the currency of Libya being tied to the British pound sterling at the conclusion of World War II.

Following the establishment of their independence in 1951 Libya created a new national currency known as the Libyan pound. This new currency was still linked to the sterling pound and was valued at a rate equal to $2.80 United States dollars.