This is quite the exotic early stamp. A postal system then was modern and Western, but the stamp is Eastern and traditional. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This is quite the badly printed stamp. Notice the right area of white where the perforations are supposed to come in. No perforations and we see the beginning of the printing of the next stamp on the sheet. Similarly the left side has no white area. Stamp printing then was done with typeography which is an expensive form of printing. This was because stamps were really a form of currency and therefore care must be taken to print at a level not easily counterfeited. It is perhaps a metaphor for the late Ottomans that the money was spent on the fancy typography but result was just sloppy.
Todays stamp is issue A5, a 10 Piaster stamp issued by the Ottoman Empire in 1873. This stamp issue existed for over 10 years with many variations and overprints. If I am making the correct judgement as to which mine is, the Scott catalog states the value as $110 mint. There doesn’t seem to be a value adjustment for the print mistake made above. If they had printed the issue on both sides of the paper or inverted the overprint the value would rapidly rise. The overprint at the bottom is the denomination while the sides say Ottoman Postage in Turkish but with earlier Arabic script.
The Ottoman Empire was in its Tanzimat era of reforms and ruled by Sultan Abdulaziz. He was the first Sultan that traveled extensively in the west. The Tanzimat reforms granted more rights to non Muslims and sought to modernize the military and the banking system. There was an alliance with Britain and a series of wars with Russia who was concerned over the treatment of Slavs and Armenians in the far flung Empire. The wars and westerm babbles were adding a large debt burden and the gradual pull back of the Ottomans was adding millions of new residents to Asia Minor, to the annoyance of the in place Turkish majority.
Sultan Abdulaziz hit upon a strategy to take care of his debts. He would grant self rule to non ethnic Turk areas in return for an annual donation yo the Ottoman treasury. Unfortunately this revenue was just immediately leveraged to take on more loans.
While spending lavishly on the military including ironclad battleships and German training for army officers, to police the empire the Sultan relied on more traditional means. The Bashi-bazouk were irregular forces that were not paid or given uniforms, but were expected to put down rebellions brutally and then reward themselves afterword with looting and pillaging. It was something real that was happening but also used to great effect by Russia to convince Balkan Slavs that the Ottomans had to go.
The Ottoman Empire went bankrupt in 1875 and Sultan Abdulaziz was forced to abdicate the next year by his ministers. When his successor Sultan Murad V showed signs of paranoia, fear and was constantly vomiting and fainting at his coronation, the ministers had worries. They thought people would see Murad and demand the thrown be returned to Abdulaziz. So 6 days later Abdulaziz was murdered in his palace by having his wrists cut with scissors so suicide could be claimed. Murad V was then deposed 93 days later and all the instability lead to another disasterous war with Russia.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Sultan Abdulaziz’s ministers. They were great, big fan. Hey, wait a minute, put down those scissors….. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting, I hope…