XIV. KING FAISAL II - THIRD ISSUE, 1954-1957

Currency: Iraqi dinar (1,000 fils = 1 dinar)
Production: Bradbury Wilkinson & Company, London

First issued: 25 October 1954

First issued: 12 February 1955

First issued: 15 January 1956

First issued: 20 October 1957

The stamps

A solid, respectable set, but undoubtedly the worst of the royal definitive issues – the portrait is lifeless and a poor resemblance. Perplexingly, this portrait beat out a much better proposal, pictured in Lowe’s The Influence of Bradbury Wilkinson…. That unused portrait is strikingly similar in feeling to the portrait used on the next set of definitives, so perhaps by 1957 the persons responsible had come to repent of their earlier decision.

These stamps aren’t the first outing of this portrait – it appeared the previous year (2 May 1953) on the small set commemorating King Faisal’s coronation (see elsewhere). A close comparison of these stamps with the coronation commemoratives shows the portraits to be extremely similar, but not identical – I’m mostly ignorant of these technical matters but it looks like we’re dealing with the same die in both cases, some modifications having been made to it after the commemoratives were issued. Most obviously, on the 1954 stamps, the outline of the hair has been altered at top and top-right, the jacket is shaded differently, particularly the lapels, the left shoulder is built up more, and there’s several small changes to the shape of the eyes.

The motivation for replacing the 1948 definitives is obvious enough – Faisal had obtained his majority, the regency was now over, and so a new image of the king, as a man rather than a boy, was required. Considered from this angle, the lifelessness of the portrait was perhaps intentional. Faisal’s appearance was charming rather than handsome and, frankly, he looked like the awkward nineteen-year-old he was. If the intention here was to present a somewhat genericised image of royal solidity at a time of transition – a king rather than the king – then probably the propaganda mission was successfully accomplished, to the detriment of the artistic one.

A small detriment, but one hard to ignore when noticed, is the relationship between the outer frame and the value tablets — the latter extend out marginally wider than the main area with the portrait, causing the outer white frame to be squeezed awkwardly as it passes them. Why the portrait area wasn’t minutely widened to be the same width as the tablets, allowing a frame of consistent width to be placed around the full ensemble, I couldn’t guess.

Creditably, this set only goes up to 200 fils, at a time when inflation meant that international airmail frequently needed a franking of over 100f – certainly no denominations are “in excess of postal needs”. The colours are a little bland compared to the previous issue, but that’s no big problem. The position as regards the 16 fils is a curious one. It’s the rarest stamp in the series – “rare” is used here in a highly relative sense, but at time of writing I cannot find one for sale, hence it not appearing here. I acquired this set about nine years ago, and until I came to write this page I hadn’t realised I was missing one of the values – I just assumed these were common enough that I had them all, ha ha ha. The 15 fils (1954) is somewhat rarer than most of the others, and in 1956 a 1f stamp appeared, followed by the 16f in 1957. Taking all this together, it seems like there was some change in rates c. 1955 which created a 16f tariff. The 1f was then issued to be combined with the 15f – then, finally, the 16f appeared and the 15f was retired. Oddly, though, the 1948 issue had a 16f stamp (1951). Which would seem to suggest that 16f paid something specific in 1951, had ceased to do so by 1954, but then did so again by 1957.

The history

This can probably be taken quickly. With Al-Said in self-imposed European exile, the régime’s ability to manage its political opponents immediately deteriorated. After only a few months, Prince Al-Ilah was forced to fly out to Al-Said and beg him to return and set things in order. He accepted, no doubt tremendously gratified at this sign of how indispensable he had become. Back in Baghdad, he set to work squashing the opposition and etc. etc. etc.

The two principal items of this period are both in the foreign sphere. First the Baghdad Pact, which came into effect on 5 April 1955. This was an alliance between Iraq, the UK and Turkey, intended to create a kind of Middle Eastern equivalent to NATO. Iran and Pakistan joined later in the year. The US, although not a member, loomed in the background. This new treaty relationship between Britain and Iraq superseded the unpopular 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty, which was at long last put out of its misery on 6 April (prompting a series of commemorative stamps dealt with elsewhere). The régime must have hoped that dispensing with the Treaty would enhance its nationalist and pan-Arab credentials but, in practical terms, the Treaty’s immediate replacement with the Pact meant that Iraq was no further away from Britain and the West than it had previously been. This became a point of acute vulnerability once item two, the Suez Affair, erupted in late 1957. Britain actively, militarily intervening against the dynamic hero of pan-Arabism destroyed what little reputation among Arabs it had left, and this put the Iraqi régime, tied to Britain not just by the Pact but also the personal loyalties of its leaders, in a rather delicate position. Al-Said suppressed any outbreaks of anti-régime sentiment with his usual rigour, but nevertheless he also felt compelled to publicly criticise and distance himself from Britain.

This crisis however passed in due course, and I’ll curtail things here for now.

5 April 2021