The Palestine Currency Board banknotes are among the most historically significant and beautiful currency ever issued in the Middle East. Established by the British Mandatory government in 1927, the Palestine Currency Board produced a series of notes that are remarkable on every level — for their design, their trilingual inscriptions, and for what they represent: the only currency ever to bear the name Palestine as an official sovereign designation.
The Palestine Currency Board
The Board was established in London in June 1926 under the chairmanship of Sir Percy Ezechiel, whose signature appears on every single note ever issued — from the first 500 mils in 1927 to the final issue of 1945. The notes were designed and printed by Thomas de la Rue & Company of London, the world’s most prestigious security printer. The League of Nations Mandate required that the name Palestine appear in all three official languages — English, Arabic and Hebrew — and the British administration went one step further, printing all text on every note in all three languages. The choice of buildings for the note vignettes was equally deliberate: each site selected for its significance to the three faiths that had shaped Palestine across the centuries.
These notes circulated in Palestinian markets, homes and businesses from 1927 to 1948. They are among the most historically significant — and most beautifully designed — banknotes ever produced for any country in the world.
The Palestine Pound — A Trilingual Currency
What makes Palestine Currency Board banknotes extraordinary is their design. Every note carried text in three languages — Arabic, English and Hebrew — reflecting the complex demographic and political reality of Mandatory Palestine. The Arabic text reads فلسطين (Filastin), the English reads Palestine, and the Hebrew reads פלשתינה (Palestina) followed by א”י (Eretz Israel). This trilingual formula was mandated by the League of Nations, which required Britain to recognise the three official languages of the territory. The result is a banknote unlike any other in the world — a document that encodes, in its very design, the contested identity of a land and its people.
The Collection — Palestine Currency Board Banknotes
The collection includes examples of Palestine Currency Board banknotes across multiple denominations and series — from the elegant first series of 1927 through to the final issues of the 1940s. Each note is presented here as a historical document — evidence of a Palestine that existed, that had its own currency, its own administration and its own people, long before the questions that surround it today.
Five Hundred Mils — Palestine Currency Board, 1929 & 1945
The 500 Mils note is the only denomination in the Palestine Currency Board series to carry the vignette of Rachel’s Tomb — Qubbat Rakhil in Arabic, Qever Rahel in Hebrew — the domed shrine at the northern entrance to Bethlehem on the Hebron Road. Rachel, the second wife of the patriarch Jacob, is venerated across Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the domed structure depicted on the note — an Ottoman-era building renovated in 1841 — was a site of shared pilgrimage for all three faiths. Its selection for the lowest paper denomination was, like every design decision on these notes, the product of intense negotiation. The reverse carries the Citadel and Tower of David — Burj Daud in Arabic, Migdal David in Hebrew — the symbol of Jerusalem that stands beside the Jaffa Gate at the entrance to the Old City. This second issue of the 500 Mils, dated 1929, is considerably scarcer than later dates and commands significant collector interest.
The final issue of the 500 Mils note, dated 15 August 1945 — the day Japan surrendered and the Second World War ended. Palestine in 1945 was a land on the edge of profound transformation: waves of Jewish survivors from the Holocaust were pressing to enter, Arab Palestinians were bracing for the political storm they could see approaching, and Britain was running out of time and will to hold its Mandate together. Yet this small purple note, carrying the same image of Rachel’s Tomb that had appeared on every 500 Mils since 1927, passed through Palestinian hands as it always had — in markets, at bakeries, across shop counters from Haifa to Hebron. Bearing four signatures of the Palestine Currency Board members, it is the most complex signatory arrangement of any note in the collection, reflecting the wartime expansion of the Board’s membership.
One Palestine Pound — Palestine Currency Board, 1927 & 1944
The first issue of the Palestine Pound — one of the rarest and most sought-after notes in the entire PCB series. Dated 1 September 1927, just weeks before the notes entered circulation on 1 November, this is an early-dated example of a note that announced something historic: Palestine had its own currency at last. The central vignette shows the Dome of the Rock — Qubbat al-Sakhra in Arabic — rising above the platform of al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, in Jerusalem. Islam’s third holiest site, built in 691 CE by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik, the Dome stands over the sacred rock from which, according to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. For Jews it marks the Foundation Rock, the holiest point on earth. That this image — arguably the most contested few square metres on the planet — should appear on the face of Palestine’s first currency was a choice of extraordinary weight. The reverse, on all denominations, shows the Citadel and Tower of David beside the Jaffa Gate. Printed in deep green, the £1 note is considered the most beautiful in the PCB series.
The finest-graded note in the collection — a Palestine Pound dated 1 January 1944, the fourth and final issue of the £1 denomination, preserved in Choice Extremely Fine condition. By 1944 Palestine was serving as a major Allied base and supply hub; British and Commonwealth troops moved through its ports and cities, Palestinian workers filled wartime industries, and the Palestine Pound was circulating further and wider than ever before. The Dome of the Rock vignette — unchanged since the first 1927 issue — still dominates the face of the note, a constant image of Jerusalem across nearly two decades of extraordinary history. Bearing four signatures of the Board’s wartime membership, this is the last £1 Palestine Pound ever issued and represents the penultimate chapter of Palestinian monetary history before the Mandate’s end.
Five Palestine Pounds — Palestine Currency Board, 1929
The £5 note introduces the second great vignette of the Palestine Currency Board series: the White Tower of Ramla — Burj al-Abyad in Arabic — a 13th-century Mamluk minaret built by Sultan al-Zahir Baybars in 1268 to celebrate his eviction of the Crusaders from Ramla and to serve the ancient White Mosque of Caliph Suleiman. Known to Muslims as the Tower of the Forty Companions of the Prophet, and to Christians as the Tower of the Forty Martyrs, it is a monument that carries the resonances of centuries of Palestinian history within its 30-metre stone walls. Al-Ramla — whose name means “the sands” in Arabic — is the only town in the region founded by Arabs, established in the early 8th century as the first capital of Arab Palestine. Printed in red on cream and carrying the signatures of Ezechiel, Caulutt and Vernon, the £5 is one of the most striking notes in the series. This 1929 second issue is rarely encountered in any grade.
Ten Palestine Pounds — Palestine Currency Board, 1939
Dated 7 September 1939 — six days after Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared war — this £10 note arrived in Palestine as the world changed forever. The Tower of Ramla vignette, shared with the £5, dominates the left of the note in deep blue, the ancient minaret standing above a bare winter tree and a flock of sheep — a pastoral Palestinian landscape rendered in extraordinary engraving detail by Thomas de la Rue. At £10, this was a note of substantial value — weeks of wages for most Palestinian workers — and it is one of the most impressive pieces of paper currency ever issued for Palestine. The coincidence of its date with the outbreak of the Second World War makes this note a document of history in the fullest sense: a piece of Palestinian currency issued on the day the world went to war, in a land that would be transformed beyond recognition before that war ended.
1948 — The End of the Palestine Pound
The Palestine pound remained in circulation until the end of the British Mandate in May 1948. When the Mandate ended, the Palestine Currency Board was wound up. In the territory that became Israel, the Palestine pound was replaced by the Israeli pound. In the West Bank and Gaza, Jordanian and Egyptian currencies respectively took over. The Palestine pound — a currency that had served the people of Palestine for two decades — ceased to exist. The notes that remained became artefacts overnight, silent witnesses to a country whose name they still carry.