XVI. THE Iraqi Republic

Currency: Iraqi dinar (1,000 fils = 1 dinar)
Production: Unknown (surely the Government Press, Baghdad)
(some overprints on the service stamps done by Bradbury Wilkinson & Company, London — see below)
First issued: 26 July 1958 - c. November 1959

Stamps of King Ghazi, overprinted “Iraqi Republic”

Stamps of King Faisal II, second issue, overprinted “Iraqi Republic”

Stamps of King Faisal II, third issue, overprinted “Iraqi Republic”

Stamps of King Faisal II, fourth issue, overprinted “Iraqi Republic”

The history

The actual coup can be taken quickly. The Free Officers, having already resolved to strike sometime in 1958, saw their opportunity in early July. The formations commanded by General Qasim and his subordinate Colonel Arif, at that time posted somewhere east of Baghdad, were ordered to take up positions on the Jordanian border. As they marched past Baghdad, it was a simple matter to enter the city and overthrow the government. The monarchy, for all its outward strength, for all of Nuri al-Said’s intrigues, collapsed overnight. By 9am on 14 July troops loyal to the Free Officers had stormed the royal palace and massacred the King, Prince Abdul al-Ilah, and much of the royal family. Al-Said escaped the initial roundup but was caught and killed the following day. His and al-Ilah’s corpses were dragged through the streets of Baghdad and gruesomely mutilated. Faisal’s appears to have been treated decorously.

And this, I think, is the end of the story. Much can probably be said about why the monarchy failed, and whether, had things shaken out differently, it might have been saved – but probably there’s better venues for that than these pages. At any rate, it did fail, and a new régime, with new men, new ideas, new priorities – and, of course, new postage stamps, arose to replace it. I would like to, eventually, say something about the Qasim era stamps, which aren’t wholly uninteresting, but there’s other matters I regard as more pressing for the moment.

The stamps and their use

I can find very little literature on this topic, and most of what follows is my attempts at drawing conclusions from the material I have seen.

Production. Gibbons doesn’t credit anyone for the production of the overprints. I think they must have been done at the Government Press at Baghdad, as I can’t see who else would have been in a position to do them. At any rate, it would have been somewhere inside Iraq. An exception to the foregoing is the handful of official values where the overprint has a noticeably shorter second line (see examples below and to the right). Robson Lowe attributes these to Bradbury Wilkinson in his monograph on that company.

Errors. Stamps are known with the lines of the overprint transposed — this happened to isolated stamps on sheets and the stamps affected were sold and used in the ordinary course. There are also stamps where the overprint is doubled, inverted, etc. — Gibbons doesn’t price these but it seems some exceptional postal usages (or, at least, postmarked examples) can be found. Other than the line transpositions, errors are rare, and it doesn’t seem like anyone was out to deliberately create freaks or eye-catching oddities.

Pre-1948 stamps overprinted. The 1 dinar postage stamp from the King Ghazi definitives was overprinted (see up top), as were the 100 fils and 200 fils official stamps from the 1941 pictorial issue. Presumably, just, there was a need for higher values and stocks of these were available.

The 1957-58 definitives. The revolution interrupted, and terminated, the issue of the 1957-58 definitive series. These stamps had been appearing, intermittently, since December 1957. At the time of the revolution, the current state of play was:

Postage stamps issued: 1f, 2f, 3f, 4f, 5f, 6f, 8f, 10f

Official stamps issued: 1f, 2f, 3f, 4f, 5f, 6f, 10f

The remaining postage stamp values must have all been in Iraq at the time of the revolution, as they received the Iraqi form of the overprint (with the unaccountable exception of the 15f), and stocks were still available for remaindering in 1971 and a small amount of overprinting in 1973.

The position with the official stamps is somewhat less clear. All of the issued values were overprinted in Iraq, as was the 8f. However no values higher than 10f were overprinted, either in Iraq or by Bradbury Wilkinson. The 30f and 50f must have been in Iraq at the time of the revolution — they weren’t overprinted at that time, but were given 1973 overprints in that year. The other values never appeared at any point, and they were never remaindered, so I must assume they were never sent to Iraq, and perhaps never printed in the first place.

The Bradbury Wilkinson overprint appears on something of a miscellany of official stamps — the 1f, 2f, 6f and 8f of the 1957-58 issue, but also the 1f, 8f and 20f of the 1955-58 issue, and the 1f of the 1948-51 issue. The Iraqi postal authority may have simply ordered Bradburys to overprint and send over whatever stamps they had printed and had yet to ship across.

Why was the 1957-58 15 fils postage stamp not overprinted? I don’t know. The 15 fils of the 1955-58 series was overprinted, so there can’t have been an objection to that particular denomination.

Continued validity of un-overprinted stamps. It seems that, before 26 July when the first overprinted stamps appeared, un-overprinted stamps continued to be used as normal. By 29 July, it seems that un-overprinted stamps had ceased to be valid, at least for international postage. I have an internal cover dated 4 November, which clearly did pass through the mails, where all the stamps are un-overprinted. I lack the material needed to comment further or in more detail. If the 4 November cover isn’t simply a curious one-off, then un-overprinted stamps must’ve become invalid for international postage much sooner than they did for domestic postage. Which I don’t think is too far-fetched of an idea — stamps as “silent ambassadors” to foreign countries, a desire to advertise the revolution abroad, etc. etc. I don’t know if, for international mail, un-overprinted stamps were invalidated immediately on 26 July, or there was a grace period of a day or two. Evidently however they had been invalidated by 29 July, as noted.

The 28 July 1958 issue of the Iraq Times contains an interesting notice that members of the public could exchange un-overprinted revenue stamps for overprinted ones until 15 August.

Commemoratives. Two pre-revolution commemorative stamps were overprinted (to turn them into new commemoratives, not simply an “Iraqi Republic” overprint) in 1958 and 1959. Apart from these, the commemorative stamps weren’t overprinted, and so they would have simply lost their validity at the same time as any other un-overprinted stamp.

When did these cease to be valid? The latest dated cover I’ve seen with these stamps is 21 November 1960. Perhaps they were formally demonetised at the end of this year — there seems to be a sharp cut-off rather than a gradual curtailment as stocks ran out.