This certificate for 20 shares of 500 dinars (No. 008701 to 008720) of Généralna Banka u Nišu, issued in December 1922, represents a rare banking document of the first Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Niš, founded in Antiquity and the historic capital of southern Serbia, was the country's second-largest city after Belgrade. The Générale Bank of Niš (Généralna Banka u Nišu) operated in a newly unified country emerging from the First World War and the Balkan wars, seeking to develop a modern banking economy on the ruins of Ottoman rule and successive conflicts. The certificate is written in Serbian (with Cyrillic and Latin characters), bearing witness to the linguistic pluralism of the young Yugoslav State