Turkish Identification Please

Hi Nigel,

It's splendid to meet others with an interest in those postmarks! Will you recommend the mentioned book?

I have not found any from Crete yet, but was quite thrilled to find one from Albania. I admire you for attempting the Turkish/Arabic script! As a WW general collector myself, interested in more or less everything, I realized I could not spend the time such a specialized endeavor would take. So I'll stick with the postmarks I am able to search for in an excel database.... (...thank you Microsoft!).

Agree with nigelc, credits to Bujutsu for starting this thread, not too many threads on the Ottomans in here.

Hi Blaamand,

As far as I know there are two main references for Ottoman postmarks:

The more recent one is in ten volumes:

"Illustrated Ottoman-Turkish Postmarks 1840-1929" by M. Z. Agaogullari and M. B. Papuçcuoglu.

I've taken the authors' names from a listing for the final volume which was published in 2010 by Isfila but I guess they are the same for the whole series.

I saw volume one when it came out and it looked great but was too expensive for me. I was rather daunted too by seeing that there were going to be many volumes. They are arranged alphabetically so volume 10 covers postmarks beginning with the letters T to Z.

The older reference which I have is "Postal Cancellations of the Ottoman Empire" by John H. Coles and Howard E. Walker.

This is in four volumes:

1. The Lost Territories in Europe
2. The Lost Territories in Africa and Asia
3. Turkey-in-Europe
4. Turkey-in-Asia

These were also very nicely produced and were published by Christies Robson Lowe between 1984 and 1995.

I would strongly recommend these books to you, especially Coles & Walker Volumes 1 and 2 which cover the postmarks from territories that are no longer part of Turkey.

nigelc - thanks for the information.
The 10 volume work sounds like quite an undertaking!!
If anything, the two volumes of 'Lost Territories' sounds very interesting. Anyway that will have to wait for next time I decide to open my 'accumulating-waiting-envelope' for Turkey.
Nigel - if I may ask - why do you have the interest for Crete postmarks in particular - family related or anything?

Hi everyone.

Thanks a lot for all your help. I sorted a couple hundred Turkish stamps and managed to identify 98% of them. There are always a couple though that stump me. I have never regretted joining this forum <G>, always a wealth of information and, a wealth of members willing to help out.

Chimo

Bujutsu

I certainly agree! Both the kindness and helpfulness in this community are great.

Most probably someone in here will be glad to help you with the remaining 2% also!