“Syrian Philatelic Club”.. a mirror of history and culture
From “England” and after the issuance of the first black postal stamp “Penny Black” in 1840, the hobby of collecting used stamps began, as a British Museum employee announced his desire to collect stamps of Queen “Victoria” and this is how stamp collecting started and spread later attracting world attention.
The idea of the Syrian Philatelic Club is an old idea as correspondence dating back to 1924 AD was found and was bought by a member of the “Syrian Philatelic Club” in France at an auction on which it was written “The Syrian Philatelic Club,” but there is no documentation for it.
“We have pictures of an envelope sent from Aleppo abroad in 1918, bearing stamps that are very valuable today in addition to seals and postal correspondence dating back to 1920” head of the Board of Directors of the Syrian Philatelic Club lawyer Bassam Al-Ayesh said in an interview with the E-Syria ( blog).
He indicated that the documentation of the club, which was first established in 1946, continued until the sixties when it was requested for the first time that the club be open to the public, adding that in 1965 the number of members reached approximately 200 members.
In 1966 the “Syria Philatelic Club” was officially re-established.
Al-Ayesh stressed that the club is interested in documenting everything related to the history of the Syrian stamp, starting from the stamp to the postal envelope of postal seals stamps, in addition to following up on the errors of the issued stamps.
Recently, efforts have been made to provide the club with young philatelists and engage with them in a dialogue that meets their interests to form special and distinguished collections of stamps.
The club’s activity has been present and distinguished since its establishment, according to Al-Ayesh, as it participated in an exhibition in Egypt in 1936, and one of the collection of Syrian philatelists won the admiration of King Farouk, who was known to be one of the most famous philatelic collectors, and at that time, he owned one of the most important collection in the world.
He went on to say “ during the crisis and in 2016, stamps of the Syrian antiquities collection 15 were sent to Germany as clear evidence of the continued existence of the Syrian state and the continuation of its sovereignty during the crisis.
Al A-yesh confirmed the value of stamps saying “The existence of the stamp means the existence of sovereignty and the state with an independent entity, and when we find a special stamp on the Syrian Mother’s Day in the fifties of the last century, this reflects the state of the Syrian society at that time”.
The chairman of the board of directors of the club pointed out that the club’s members cooperate in documenting the stamps of a number of unions including the Bar Association and the Artists Syndicate since their establishment until today which were preserved in two paintings.
The Syrian Philatelic Club played a major role in introducing postal history and the Syrian stamp to the public, where the lawyer Bassam Al-Ayesh and Bassam Al-Qudsi and the late Ammar Naba’a created the Syrian stamp face book page and the official Syrian Philatelic page which attracted a lot of amateurs of the younger generation in Syria and abroad.
Rawaa Ghanam