Postage stamps and postal history of Aden

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Aden is known for its boat-oriented stamps. Mukalla is on the Hadhramaut coast, about 500 km east of Aden, in what was at the date of the stamp, the Aden Protectorate.

A 1951 stamp of Aden depicting Steamer Point with the outside of the volcanic rim of Crater in the background.

Aden is a city in Yemen. Aden's location made it a popular exchange port for mail passing between places around the Indian Ocean and Europe. Mail is known to exist from June 15, 1839, although a regular postmaster was not appointed until 1857.

Stamps of British India

Aden used postage stamps of British India until it became a crown colony on April 1, 1937. Although these stamps carried no special identification they may be recognised through the use of the number 124 in postal cancellations, which was assigned to Aden as part of the Indian postal number system.

First stamps

Once Aden became a crown colony it received a series of pictorial stamps inscribed "Aden".

George VI

In 1939, a new issue of stamps included a portrait of King George VI, but the sultans in Hadhramaut (whose territories had been under the British Aden Protectorate since the 1880s) objected to this, and so the British government issued separate stamps in 1942, but with the additional inscriptions Kathiri State of Seiyun and Qu'aiti State of Shihr and Mukalla (later Qu'aiti State in Hadhramaut), plus portraits of the respective sultans. All of these types were valid in Aden and the Aden Protectorate.

Queen Elizabeth

Stamps inscribed Aden continued until the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Postage stamp gallery

• 

  Stanley Gibbons #11, 1937 5r. Dhow, purple.

• 

  Stanley Gibbons 1939, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #23a, #24, #25, #26, #27a

• 

  Stanley Gibbons #27a, 1939 10r. Capture of Aden, brown and violet.

• 

  Stanley Gibbons 1949 #30, #31, Royal Silver Wedding

Revenue stamps

Aden used revenue stamps of India overprinted ADEN.

An 8anna Indian court fee revenue stamp overprinted for use in Aden.

Sources

• Stanley Gibbons Ltd: various catalogues
• Encyclopaedia of Postal History
• Rossiter, Stuart & John Flower. The Stamp Atlas. London: Macdonald, 1986. ISBN 0-356-10862-7

Further reading

• Brown, Gary. Catalogue of a Display: Aden Postal History to 1914 given to The Royal Philatelic Society of London April 28, 2011. Melbourne: Gary Brown, 2011.
• Proud, Edward B. & R. W. Pratt. Postage stamps and postal history of Aden. Proud-Bailey Co. Ltd., 1985. ISBN 1-872465-00-5
• Proud, Edward. The Postal History of Aden and Somaliland Protectorate. Proud-Bailey Co. Ltd., 2005. ISBN 1-872465-41-2

External links

• http://www.stampdomain.com/country/aden/display.htm