Postage Stamps

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POSTAGE STAMPS

Government-issued stamps encapsulate the history and culture of the region.

The Islamic states of the Middle East had operated elaborate postal messenger systems since the seventh century, but it was Great Britain in 1840 that issued the world's first postage stamp. It depicted Queen Victoria. Postage stamps quickly spread, with the Ottoman Empire issuing its first stamp in 1863, followed by Egypt in 1866, Persia in 1868, Afghanistan
in 1871, the Hijaz (now part of Saudi Arabia) in 1916, and Yemen in 1926. Elsewhere, British, French, and Italian colonial officials in the Middle East designed the first stamps for their jurisdictions.


Early Middle Eastern stamps, like Islamic coins before them, observed conservative Islamic tradition by rarely portraying human figures. Arabesque designs, calligraphy, or a crescent and star served as symbols instead. In 1876, Persia broke with tradition by showing its ruler on a stamp; the Ottomans did the same in 1913. Egypt, Iraq, and Transjordan followed during the 1920s; then Afghanistan, Syria, and Lebanon during the 1940s. Saudi Arabia, more isolated and conservative, waited until the 1960s.

Rulers appeared variously in traditional dress, in Western coat and tie, or in military uniform. Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who secularized Turkey after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire by, among other things, outlawing Muslim head-wear, wore civilian dress on his stamps from 1926 on, but many soldiers-turned-president preferred military uniforms. After coming to power in 1979, Iraq's President Saddam Hussein appeared variously on stamps in coat and tie, army uniform, and Arab kafiyya. Some rulers promoted a cult of the leader on their stamps, with the hero towering above the masses he claimed to embody. Syria's Hafiz al-Asad, Egypt's Anwar al-Sadat, and Iraq's Saddam saturated stamps with their own portraits. Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser was more reticent, and Husni Mubarak followed Nasser's rather than Sadat's example in this regard.

The first stamps of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen bore inscriptions in only Arabic script. Although they were not French colonies, they soon added French, long the main language of world diplomacy. All later switched to English as their second language on stampsexcept Afghanistan, which kept French, and Turkey, whose adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928 made its Turkish-only stamps partly accessible to Westerners. French colonial possessions used French, and British possessions English. French Algeria and Italian Libya used no Arabic on their stamps until independence (1962 and 1951, respectively). Hebrew has been the main language on Israel's stamps since independence in 1948, with English and Arabic as secondary languages.

European colonial stamps presented romanticized and orientalist colonial picturesque themespre-Islamic ruins, old mosques, colorful landscapes, and folk scenes. European officials first selected the pyramids and sphinx as symbols for Egyptian stamps, but many Egyptians came to identify, at least partially, with these pre-Islamic symbols. Egypt often commemorates ancient pharaonic treasures on stamps; folk costumes are also shown as part of a proud national heritage. Even so, stamps with such themes are often issued with Western tourists and collectors in mind.

Revolutions drastically changed stamp designs. "The people"symbolic soldiers, peasants, workers, professionals, and women in both traditional and Western dresscelebrate liberation, modernization, and the drive for economic development. Stamps advertise such things as petroleum pipelines, factories, and broadcasting stations. Socialist countries commemorated land reform, the spread of health-care, and five-year plans. In addition to such symbols of material and social progress, Israel also depicts themes from biblical history, Jewish history, and Zionism.

The stamps of Israel and the Arab states also reflect their respective versions of the ArabIsrael conflict. Stamps commemorate the war dead, advertise the latest aircraft, and boast of specific victories. Most Arab countries have issued stamps deploring the Dayr Yasin massacre (as they describe the event) of 1948, mourn the plight of Palestinian refugees, and celebrate Palestinian resistance to Israel. Since Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the Dome of the Rock (in the Haram alSharif) has often appeared on stamps as a symbol of Arab and Islamic claims to Jerusalem. The stamps of Arab countries that depict maps omit the name Israel, showing only the borders and sometimes the name of pre-1948 Palestine. With its borders still unsettled and controversial, Israel's stamp designers make it a practice to avoid showing national maps.

During the 1950s and 1960s, pan-Arab themes tended to overshadow symbols of local territorial patriotism. Beginning in the 1970s, Islamic themes became popularmosques, Qurʾans, hegira dates, and crescentson stamps honoring the prophet Muhammad's birthday, the Islamic New Year, and the hajj. Islamic themes stand out above all on the stamps of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the 1979 revolution, depicting deceased Shiʿite holy men, martyrs killed in the jihad (holy struggle) against Iraq, and anti-American symbols.

see also arabisrael conflict; colonialism in the middle east; dayr yasin; orientalism.


Bibliography


Hazard, Harry W. "Islamic Philately as an Ancillary Discipline." In The World of Islam: Studies in Honour of Philip K. Hitti, edited by James Kritzeck and R. B. Winder. New York: St. Martin's Press; London: Macmillan, 1959.

Reid, Donald Malcolm. "The Postage Stamp: A Window on Saddam Hussein's Iraq." Middle East Journal 47 (1993): 7789.

Reid, Donald Malcolm. "The Symbolism of Postage Stamps: A Source for the Historian." Journal of Contemporary History 19 (1984): 223249.

Scott 2003 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, 9 vols. Available from <http://www.scottonline.com>.

donald malcolm reid