Welcome to Rainer's Overland Mail Baghdad-Haifa Pages |
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Forerunners till1923 |
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Long before the commercial period (as i
call it) of the Overland Mail Baghdad-Haifa started in 1923, mail has
been transported through the Syro-Iraqi desert in both ways. It is believed that as early as three thousand years ago, commercial correspondence was transported from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Coast, which continued in various forms during the three millenniums.
With the
establishment of the East India Company (E.I.C.) in 1600, a need arose
for a faster passage of mail between India and England. Sometime in the
mid 1600th some of the official mail went from Bombay to the Persian
Gulf, to Basra, Baghdad and from there by the Desert Route to the
Mediterranean Coast and from there to Europe. It is extremely difficult to get
qualified details about that very early Postal Connection, hence i will
be very careful in adding information here unless i can be very certain
they are correct and proven by the respective postal documents. Norman
Collins in his Monograph has listed quite a number of details, yet
incomplete and partly incorrect but i do jot want to blame him, he was
the first to try to summarize this postal connection and he has to be
praised for that. But the research goes on... I will split this chapter into Westwards and Eastwards Mail and further chapters into the various Postal Routes (Turkish Route, British/Indian Route) etc. and further chapters depend on the origin or the covers in order to explain the postage rate and routing if neccessary. Known names in the early years for the Desert Route though the Syro-Iraqi desert of which i am aware were.
All above mentioned routes somehow operated in parallel and depend of the political situation even a combination of routes may have been used.
I plan to create dedicated pages with
images of covers transported by the respective routes as material and
information is available.
The below map of 1851 show the various Overland Mail Routes to India...
A 1890 map shows the Post Route through the desert from Damascus to Baghdad.
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