Specifically, this system was kept during the Middle Ages and Modern Age in England, France, and Italy. In each of these countries the Latin: libra was translated into local language: pound in England, French: [[French livre|livre]] in France, Italian: [[Italian lira|lira]] in Italy. The Venetian lira was one of the currencies in use in Italy and due to the economic power of the Venetian Republic a popular currency in the Eastern Mediterranean trade.
During the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire and the Eyalet of Egypt adopted the Turkish: lira as their national currency, equivalent to 100 piasters or kuruş. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed between 1918 and 1922, many of the successor states retained the lira as their national currency. In some countries, such as Cyprus, which have belonged to both the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire, the words lira and pound are used interchangeably.
For the Turkish lira, the Turkish lira sign is used. The Lebanese lira uses (before numerals) or (after numerals) in Latin and in Arabic. The Syrian lira uses (before numerals) or (after numerals) in Latin and in Arabic.
The Italian lira had no official sign, but the abbreviations and and the symbols (two bars), (one bar) were all commonly used.
The Maltese lira used before 1986 and thereafter (both as prefixes), though £M continued to be used in unofficial capacities.
The Unicode system allocated to the Italian lira, to provide compatibility with a legacy HP character set.[1] As with, where the one-bar and the two-bar versions are treated as allographs and the choice between them is merely stylistic, no evidence has been found that either style predominated in Italy or anywhere else.
The Turkish lira was introduced in 1844 during the Ottoman reign. The Turkish lira is now the currency of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and used in Turkish-occupied northern Syria.
The Lebanese pound and Syrian pound are both called "lira" (Arabic: ليرة) in Arabic, the national language of both Lebanon and Syria.
See main article: Italian lira. The lira was the currency of Italy from its unification until it was merged into the euro in 1999.[2] A unit of currency lira had previously been used in some of the states and possessions that became Italy but their values were not necessarily equivalent. (See Luccan lira, Papal lira, Parman lira, Sardinian lira and Tuscan lira.)