Thursday 17 December 2015

REPUBLIC OF YEMEN - al-Jumhūrīyah al-Yamanīyah


Yemen (Arabic: اَلْيَمَنُ, al-Yaman), sometimes spelled Yaman, officially the Republic of Yemen (Arabic: اَلْجُمْهُورِيَّةُ ٱلْيَمَنِيَّةُal-Jumhūrīyah al-Yamanīyah, literally "Yemeni Republic"), is a country at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is the second-largest Arab sovereign state in the peninsula, occupying 527,970 square kilometres (203,850 square miles). The coastline stretches for about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles). It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, the Gulf of Aden and Guardafui Channel to the south, and Oman to the east. Yemen's territory encompasses more than 200 islands, including the Socotra islands in the Arabian Sea. emen's constitutionally stated capital is the city of Sana'a, but the city has been under Houthi rebel control since February 2015.

A number of Red Sea islands, including the Hanish Islands, Kamaran, and Perim, as well as Socotra in the Arabian Sea, belong to Yemen; the largest of these is Socotra. Many of the islands are volcanic; for example Jabal al-Tair had a volcanic eruption in 2007, and before that in 1883. Although mainland Yemen is in the southern Arabian Peninsula and thus part of Asia, and its Hanish Islands and Perim in the Red Sea are associated with Asia, the archipelago of Socotra, which lies east of the horn of Somalia and is much closer to Africa than to Asia.

The first posts in Yemen were part of the Ottoman Empire postal system. After the Ottomans withdrew from Yemen there was no formal postal service, as far as is known, until the first issue of Yemeni stamps in 1926. The Ottoman withdrawal left the Yemen without a formal postal system, or at least there is no surviving evidence of one, until the first issue of stamps in 1926. C&W and A&P mostly concern themselves with the Ottoman era and the German cancellers. Some intaglio cancels are described elsewhere though the makeshift provisional types are unexplored. Yemen issued its first stamps in 1926.  International mail required additional stamps to be added from a country that was a member of the Universal Postal Union as Yemen did not join the UPU until 1 January 1930. International mail was often routed via Aden on the Yemeni coast which was under British control at the time. Stamps of British India, as used in Aden, were added and mail cancelled ADEN CAMP. After joining the UPU, Yemen issued a new series of definitive stamps in accordance with UPU regulations.

The British Crown Colony of Aden issued stamps from 1937 to 1965. Aden Colony joined with Aden Protectorate to form the Federation of South Arabia and issued stamps from 1963 to 1966. South Yemen became independent as the People's Republic of Southern Yemen on 30 November 1967, and was renamed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1970. North Yemen and South Yemen unified on 22 May 1990 to form the present-day Yemen. Today, Yemen has a range of modern postal services run by the General Corporation for Post and Postal Saving.

Aden is a city in southern Yemen. Aden's location made it a popular exchange port for mail passing between places around the Indian Ocean and Europe. When Captain S. B. Haines of the Indian Marine, the East India Company's navy, occupied Aden on 19 January 1839, mail services were immediately established in the settlement with a complement of two postal clerks and four letter carriers. An interim postmaster was appointed as early as June 1839. Mail is known to exist from 15 June 1839 although a regular postmaster was not appointed until 1857; one of the officials of the Political Agent or the civil surgeon performed the duties of postmaster for a small salary. 

The Aden Settlement used adhesive postage stamps of British India from 1 October 1854 until Aden became a crown colony on 1 April 1937. As an outpost of the British East Indian empire, Aden was supplied with India's first lithographed adhesives, which became available in Aden just as they were issued on the Indian mainland. Until 1857, the only Aden post office was in the Crater, later known as Aden Cantonment or Aden Camp. Mails were carried by camel to and from Steamer Point. In 1857 a Postmaster was appointed and the main post office was moved to new quarters at Steamer Point. Covers from Aden with the Indian lithographed stamps are rare. In 1937, the Settlement was detached from India and became the Colony of Aden, a British Crown colony. 

In 1939, a new definitive issue with the effigy of King George VI was issued. The sultans of the two major states in the Hadhramaut (part of the Aden Protectorate) objected to this since they were sovereigns in their own right and were not subjects of the King of the United Kingdom. Therefore the British government issued separate stamps in 1942, with the additional inscriptions Kathiri State of Seiyun and Qu'aiti State of Shihr and Mukalla (later Qu'aiti State in Hadhramaut), with portraits of the respective sultans replacing the effigy of George VI. All of these types were valid in Aden and in the Aden Protectorate.

In 1951, the definitive issue of 1939 was overprinted with shilling denominations when the British East African shilling replaced the Indian rupee as the legal currency of Aden. Stamps inscribed Aden were used until 31 March 1965 when all were withdrawn.Stamps of the Federation of South Arabia, formed from Aden Colony and Aden Protectorate, were issued from 1963 to 1966.




Getting postcards and letters become very rare and difficult now a days because of the political situations. Luckily the covers with Arab Postal Day 2012 stamps traveled and safely delivered. Mrs. Sumaih sent these  covers with perfect postmark, unfortunately the postal clerk tried to make it again clear but it became double postmark. Thank You  

2 comments:

  1. Hello, my name is Emilio Fernandez and I collect covers from whole world, I'd like to invite you to visit my blog about covers www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com

    Also I have another blog about postcards, where I show the pictures of all postcards that I have received from a lot of countries www.postalesenmibuzon.blogspot.com

    Best wishes from Spain

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.