Happiness Is Adding A New Country To My Collection Like Central Albania

Finalized a deal with a club member ,now I get to add a page to my collection for CENTRAL ALBANIA. In 60 years of collecting never hear of the stamp issuing country .It makes my day when I find out about and get a stamp from a place or government that nobody knows about. Will scan my page when I get my hands on it and write it up.

Never heard of this short lived unrecognized area. Just a taste while we wait for the write up.

Nice to make this discovery of terra incognita these days. I've never seen stamps from here before. SG, in typically dull factual fashion, simply lists it as Section III in the Albania section of the Balkans catalogue. Wonder what Robson Lowe would have made of Albania?

Nice Never heard about it, cool with some unexpected progress, floor

Anybody knows if any of these stamps did ever actually carry mail?

In period use, I believe, would be Oct.16,1913-Feb.1,1914. I found several covers none in period. The Turkish overprints came later.

Looks like Central Albania declared their independence and issue a set of local stamps, then the Turkish rulers didn't care for that event so they then overprinted the stamps with a Turkish Government hand stamp .

Very interesting!
Adding to that, a few years later the Albanians got the last word toward the turks when they found they didn't care for the Ottoman stamps no more - and handstamped them with national heraldic eagle. (Wish I had some images to share, but these stamps are not to be found in my album)

Edit: RedwoodRandy - very nice covers!

I've never heard of Central Albania either. Nice stamps.

I just added a stamp from Zambezia to my collection. Unlike Central Albania, I've heard of Zambezia, just never had a stamp from it until now.

Robert

Here is my page ,I hope to develop this area further.The information is the best for now,but hope to get more accurate info.

Excellent stamps Floortrader - nicely used too.

I have not been able to find a decent map showing the boundaries of Central Albania - anyone seen one?

BEE SEE-----google GHEG ALBANIAN , GHEG or GEGE dialect . they have a excellent map with more details .

Central Albania and your stamps have a very interesting history (they are commonly called the Tarabosh stamps) and are somewhat an oddity.

First of all, after the Balkan Wars, Essad Pasha Toptani, an Ottoman army officer cooperated with the Balkan League and established a state in central Albania based in Durrës (Durazzo), called the Republic of Central Albania. The state was short lived (Oct 16, 1913-Mar 7, 1914) lasting only a few months until it was taken over by the newly crowned Prince of Albania, Wilhelm of Wied. Toptani was exiled to Rome.

Regarding these stamps --

According to John Phipps in his book "Albania and Epirus", these stamps:

1) Were ordered by private promoters (not named) and printed in Italy by Modiano of Triste

2) The promoters hoped they could get Essad Pasha to adopt the stamps, probably in order to make money on the philatelic market, (as they showed the specimens to stamp dealers ever before taking a supply to Essad in Durrës).

3. Apparently Essad took possession of the stamps, probably without paying for them, but was gone before he was able to use them.

Here is where it gets weird --

After the start of WW1 - The Principality of Albania collapsed and Prince Wilhelm fled the country, eventually returning to Germany. With Italian and Serbian financial backing, Toptani hired forces and returned to Durrës and re-took the region without a fight on Oct 3, 1914. He controlled the region of "Central Albania" until Austro-Hungarian forces swept through northern and central Albania in the spring of 1916. Toptani fled to Salonika from there went to France, eventually representing Albania at the Paris Peace Conference.

The post office in Durres opened on Jan 9, 1915 and Toptani used defaced Albanian Skanderbeg stamps as well as the Central Albania stamps he took back in 1914. The Central Albania stamps were handstamped with a double circle bearing a crescent and star at the top and two Arabic (or most likely Turkish) inscriptions. According to Phipps, the inscription in the inner circle reads:"Shijak 10th May 1913" and the outer circle reads: "The surrender of the Dutch officers and the seizure of the cannons". Apparently this must refer to and engagement between the police and insurgents in Shijak.

Hope this helps provide some historical background.

floortrader and redwoodrandy, those are some very nice stamps

Michael

Thanks Mike for the additional information........now thinking we should change the title of this page ,with all the addition of all this extra information and extra scans ,maybe we should make this searchable for others .

My end date of the Republic of Central Albania as Feb.1,1914 is when Essad Pasha Toptani offered the Albanian throne to William of Wied. However, most put the end date on March 7,1914 when Wied actually arrived and took formal control. I am going with March 7,1914.

https://www.cherrystoneauctions.com...(Essad+Post)

Click on picture to enlarge.

redwoodrandy

I know that Wikipedia says that Essad Pasha "offered" the throne to Wilhelm, however he was essentially forced to do this.

After the Ottomans were driven out of the region in the First Balkan War, the Great Powers (primarily Italy and Austria Hungary) wanted to prevent Serbia from gaining an outlet to the Adriatic Sea, fearing that it would essentially become a Russian port. Therefore, in the Treaty of London (1913) the Great Powers decided to create an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy, but under the protection of the Great Powers. This was further defined in the August 1913 Treaty of Bucharest.

The Great Powers created the International Control Commission, which chose Wilhelm of Wied (a 35 year old German Army Captain) to be Prince, forcing Essad Pasha Toptani to relinquish control.

While Toptani outwardly agreed, behind the scenes he led an uprising against the Prince, and was forced to leave the country.

Since both Italy and Serbia had secret aspirations of control of Albania, they supported Toptani in retaking the area around Durrës after Prince Wilhelm fled the country.

The above description greatly simplifies a very complex situation. The Principality of Albania probably never had a chance as Italy secretly supported Toptani in his uprisings to try and overthrow the Prince, the Ottomans still had a propaganda machine targeting uneducated peasants loyal to Islam and Islamic spiritual leaders, and the Greeks to the south were still unhappy that they didn't get Northern Epirus (today Southern Albania) and supported their own insurrections in the south. In fact as soon as WW1 started, Greek troops immediately moved into Southern Albania (Northern Epirus) to "protect the Greek population".