Libya P-37b 10 Dinars ND (1972) XF—Anti-Italian Resistance Hero—Horses—LARGE note

Libya’s first dinar series, issued just two years after Gaddafi’s revolution replaced the monarchy, opens with one of the most charged portraits in African numismatics: Omar Mukhtar, the resistance leader the Italians hanged in 1931. Putting him on the new republic’s highest-denomination note was a political statement as much as a design choice. The P-37b is the more common of the two issued varieties — distinguished from the scarcer P-37a by a Quranic verse inscription at lower right — and the one most collectors encounter. Printed by Bradbury Wilkinson on a large 192 × 94 mm sheet, it is an imposing note.

Front

• Colors:
  • Background: multicolor underprint
  • Dominant engraving: blue-grey
• Portrait of Omar Mukhtar at left
• Arabic inscriptions: مصرف ليبيا المركزي (Central Bank of Libya); عشرة دنانير ليبية (Ten Libyan Dinars); legal tender and issuing authority declarations
• Quranic verse inscription at lower right (P-37b only)
• Script: Arabic
• Signatures: Kasem M. Sherlala, Governor

Back

• Colors:
  • Background: multicolor underprint
  • Dominant engraving: blue-gray
• Three horsemen at center — a classic image of Libyan Bedouin cavalry
• Bilingual inscription: Central Bank of Libya / Ten Dinars in Latin
• Script: Latin

Other Characteristics

• Varieties:
  • P-37a — ND (1971), without Quranic inscription at lower right
  • P-37b — ND (1972), with Quranic inscription at lower right — this note
  • P-37s — Specimen
• Catalog numbers: P-37b; Numista N#223018
• Watermark: Coat of Arms
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 192 × 94 mm
• Issuing entity: Central Bank of Libya
• Printer: Bradbury Wilkinson and Company, United Kingdom (1856–1990)
• Demonetized: Yes
• Signatures: Kasem M. Sherlala, Governor
• Currency: Libyan Dinar (1971–date)
• Official language(s): Arabic

About Libya

• Origin of name: from the ancient Greek Libúe, used by the Greeks to refer to all of North Africa west of Egypt; derived from the name of the Libu, a Berber tribe recorded in Egyptian texts as early as the 13th century BC
• Capital: Tripoli (city pop. ~1.2 million; metro ~1.8 million)
  • Origin of name: from the Greek Tripolis, meaning "Three Cities" — referring to the three ancient Phoenician settlements of Oea (modern Tripoli), Sabratha, and Leptis Magna
• Population: ~7.4 million (UN 2023) — similar to Bulgaria or Washington State
• Area: 1,759,541 km² / 679,362 mi² — similar to Alaska or the combined area of France, Germany, Spain, and Italy
• GDP per capita at PPP: ~$13,000 (est.) — heavily dependent on oil; severely disrupted by civil conflict since 2011
• Main exports: crude oil (~95% of export revenue), natural gas, petrochemicals
• Borders: Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Egypt; Mediterranean Sea (north)
• Official/spoken language: Arabic — official; Berber (Tamazight) and Tuareg spoken by minorities
• Ethnicities: Arab-Berber (~97%), Tuareg, Tebu, and other minorities
• Memberships: United Nations (1955); Arab League (1953); African Union (2002); OPEC (1962)
• Sovereignty:
  • Phoenician and Greek colonies (7th–6th century BC) — Carthaginian and Cyrenaean settlements along the coast
  • Roman province (146 BC–643 AD) — Leptis Magna becomes one of the empire’s great cities; birthplace of Emperor Septimius Severus
  • Arab-Islamic conquest (643) — Islam and Arabic language take hold
  • Ottoman rule (1551–1911) — Libya incorporated into the Ottoman Empire as the province of Tripolitania
  • Italian colonization (1911–1943) — brutal conquest; Omar Mukhtar leads 20-year resistance; executed 1931
  • British and French administration (1943–1951)
  • Kingdom of Libya (1951–1969) — first African country to gain independence via the UN; King Idris I
  • Gaddafi’s coup (1969) — Colonel Muammar Gaddafi overthrows the monarchy; establishes the Libyan Arab Republic
  • Republic / Jamahiriya (1969–2011) — this note issued during this period
  • Civil war and NATO intervention (2011) — Gaddafi killed; state collapses into competing factions
  • Divided governance (2011–date) — two rival governments; ongoing conflict

Libya Unfiltered

Libya has more oil per capita than almost any country on earth. It also has two governments, neither of which fully controls the country.

Leptis Magna — the Roman city on Libya’s coast — is one of the best-preserved ancient cities in the world. It is largely unexcavated. It sits in a war zone.

Gaddafi ruled for 42 years. He abolished money at one point, declared private trade illegal, and renamed the months of the calendar. February became “Lights.”

Libya’s population is 90% urban — one of the highest rates in Africa — despite being 90% desert.

The Great Man-Made River: Gaddafi built the largest irrigation pipeline in the world, pumping ancient fossil water from aquifers beneath the Sahara to coastal cities. It still runs. No one is sure how long the aquifers will last.

Omar Mukhtar was 73 years old when the Italians captured and hanged him. He had been fighting them for 20 years. His last words, according to witnesses: We will not surrender. We win or we die.

Five Years Before the Human Catastrophe

This note was issued in 1972, three years after Gaddafi’s coup and a decade before the worst of his excesses. Libya in 1972 was flush with oil money, building infrastructure, and projecting a kind of revolutionary optimism. The dinar was strong. The note was large, well-printed, and serious.

Putting Omar Mukhtar on the 10 Dinar — the man who resisted Italian colonialism for two decades before being publicly executed — was Gaddafi’s way of writing his own origin story onto the currency. Resistance. Anti-imperialism. The new Libya as heir to the old defiance.

The Man on the Note

Omar Mukhtar (c. 1858–1931) was a Quranic teacher who became the military commander of the Libyan resistance against Italian colonization. For 20 years he led guerrilla campaigns in the Jebel Akhdar mountains, surviving repeated Italian offensives. The Italians eventually captured him in 1931, tried him in a military court in four days, and hanged him publicly in front of 20,000 prisoners of war — a deliberate act of humiliation that backfired. He became a martyr across the Arab world.

Anthony Quinn played him in the 1981 film Lion of the Desert. Gaddafi funded the production. The film was banned in Italy until 2009.

Printed by Bradbury Wilkinson

Bradbury Wilkinson and Company of New Malden, Surrey printed banknotes and stamps for governments worldwide from 1856 until the firm was absorbed into De La Rue in 1990. Their intaglio work is characterized by fine-line engraving and deep ink relief — the kind of printing you can feel with a fingertip. The blue-gray engraving on this note is a Bradbury Wilkinson production at its most restrained and authoritative.

Own This Document of Libya, Before and After

This is a UNC (Uncirculated) example of P-37b — the 1972 variety with the Quranic inscription, signed by Governor Kasem M. Sherlala. At this grade, the blue-gray engraving is sharp, the multicolor underprint is vivid, and the large format commands attention in any album.

It ships in a protective sleeve. A note from the first years of a new currency, a new republic, and a revolution that hadn’t yet shown what it would become.