The Stamps Of Hatay, (Formerly Alexandretta)

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes that have rocked parts of Turkey and Syria, I heard on the news this morning that some of the worst destruction has occurred in the Turkish province of Hatay, and in particular the city of Antakya (formerly known as Antioch). I suppose that a lot of us who collect world wide pre-1940 might have come across some of the stamps issued by this province, which variously has been under French mandate, a province of Syria, and, since 1939, a province of Turkey. Scott lists just 37 postage stamps and 13 postage dues for the entire run of Hatay, all issued in 1939.Some of them are contemporary Turkish stamps overprinted "Hatay Devleti" and a surcharge changing the face value , some are stamps issued by Hatay itself, and some are the Hatay stamps overprinted with the date that the province was annexed to Turkey. I suppose that prior to the news today I hadn't given Hatay much thought, beyond having seen the stamps listed in Scott, and seen the page in my album (sadly, empty, although I do have a few from Alexandretta, its former name), but I will certainly be pulling for the good people of that region and hope that they can recover and rebuild from this terrible tragedy

The greatest devastation of the earthquake was not only in the former country of Hatay/Alexandretta, but also in Cilicia.

Great selection of material not often seen. Thx for sharing, Rod.

There is nothing more disconcerting, than knowing one has
certain stamps in their collection, but cannot find them.

Esp. with Worldwide collecting.

I knew I had SANJAK OF ALEXANDRETTA (HATAY) but my
database showed nil
I was thinking I had a computer image loss.

Searching Alexandretta my worry was solved.
I had them under SANDJAK
(Time to add extra text string to the stamp images)

Sanjak, and the variant spellings sandjak, sanjaq and sinjaq, are English or French transliterations of the Turkish word sancak, meaning "district", "banner" or "flag".



JSTOR

I have a couple of pages on Alexandretta: http://billsey.seymourfamily.com/A/...dretta01.htm. I have a Hatay collection around here somewhere but I don't have it scanned...

Get to work! Billsey.

Using your map, I think I make out the "Syrian Saddle"