From the Menzilhane to the Tughra

From the Menzilhane to the Tughra

Prephilatelic Period Hits: 60

The Ottoman Post and the Birth of Ottoman Philately, 1840–1865

The first Ottoman postage stamps did not create an imperial postal system; they completed a reform begun more than two decades earlier. For collectors, the 1863 Tughra issue is therefore best understood not as an isolated “first issue,” but as the visible, adhesive expression of Tanzimat administration, fiscal control and an expanding public post.

Table of Contents

Before stamps: messengers, Tatars and the imperial road

Long before adhesive postage, the Ottoman state possessed an organized communications system. Imperial orders, provincial reports, military intelligence and treasury correspondence moved through ulaks, mounted Tatars, and the menzil network of relay stations. Horses, guides and accommodation were supplied along established routes, but this was principally an instrument of government. Its burdens fell heavily on provincial communities, while private access remained irregular and expensive. Modern Turkish postal-history scholarship accordingly treats the public post of 1840 not as the invention of communication, but as the reorganization of an old state courier system for a new administrative age.

Reform began under Sultan Mahmud II. A Hatt-ı Hümayun of 1833—identified in the Ottoman archives as HAT 489/23995—envisaged a centrally directed system that would strengthen administration, serve inhabitants and foreigners, and produce revenue. An experimental reorganization of the Istanbul–Edirne route was proposed, with relay stages approximately four or five hours apart. By 1840 officials familiar with European postal practice, including Mustafa Sami Efendi, had been brought into the preparatory work.

Foreign post offices supplied both a model and a provocation. Austrian, French, Russian, British, Greek and other services operated in Ottoman ports and commercial centres under capitulatory privileges. They offered merchants comparatively dependable links with Europe, but diverted traffic and revenue from the Ottoman administration. The modern imperial post was therefore simultaneously a public utility, a Tanzimat institution and an assertion of fiscal and territorial sovereignty.

The Posta Nezareti of 1840

The Posta Nezareti was formally established on 23 October 1840 under Sultan Abdülmecid. The first central post office, the Postahane-i Âmire, occupied the former Cizyehane offices in the courtyard of the Yeni Cami at Istanbul. Experimental dispatches left for Rumelia on 28 October and for Anatolia on 2 November; regular carriage of private letters, money and parcels followed. On 16 November 1840, a postal regulation placed the institution on a statutory basis. Turkish archival scholarship states that the regulation drew substantially upon French postal law, translated and adapted to Ottoman circumstances.

The reform opened state communications to the public, but did not yet introduce adhesive prepayment. Charges were calculated by weight and distance; manuscript rate markings and post-office seals served as evidence that an item had entered the system. Early negative seals commonly carried formulas such as an cânib-i postahane-i…—“from the post office of…”—sometimes with a town name and Rumi year. These pre-adhesive covers are fundamental to an Ottoman collection: they document the administrative machinery upon which the Tughra issue later depended.

The organization expanded from Istanbul into the provinces, although not evenly. Tatars continued to carry the mails, and the postal administration remained financially connected to the Treasury. The Post was initially attached administratively to the Ministry of Commerce, later to Public Works, while its revenues and fiscal responsibilities brought it under Ministry of Finance supervision. That relationship explains why the first stamps would receive a separate financial control inscription rather than being solely products of the postal department.

Rowland Hill, European reform and the Ottoman decision

Britain’s reform supplied the century’s most influential precedent. Rowland Hill attacked a system in which rates varied by distance and number of sheets, postage was often collected from recipients, and expensive letters were frequently refused. From 1837 he advocated a uniform one-penny rate paid in advance and proposed either prepaid stationery or a small gummed label. Postal reform became law in 1839; the Penny Black entered use in May 1840, and British letter volume more than doubled in the first year.

Ottoman modernization was not a simple copy of Britain. Its 1840 regulations were more immediately indebted to French administrative practice, while distance and weight remained important. Nevertheless, Hill’s essential principle—that postage should be prepaid by a standardized, accountable adhesive—spread internationally and addressed Ottoman problems of expensive communication, slow fee collection and opportunities for irregular accounting. The stamp was particularly attractive because it converted postal revenue into a controlled piece of state paper.

The decisive Ottoman advocate was Çapanzade Agah Efendi, appointed head of the Postahane-i Âmire in 1861. Better known as the co-founder of Tercümân-ı Ahvâl, Agah was a multilingual Tanzimat administrator who had served in Paris. He proposed adopting postage stamps, and the matter passed through the Meclis-i Muhasebe-i Maliye and Meclis-i Vâlâ-yı Ahkâm-ı Adliye before imperial approval. A decree dated 15 March 1862 authorized the project; Agah’s reforms brought adhesive postage into operation during 1862–63.

Dating requires care. European catalogues and Tevfik Kuyaş’s classic Royal Philatelic Society paper give 1 January 1863 as the public issue date. Turkish sources variously record 12 or 13 January, while the announcement appeared in the Rûznâme-i Ceride-i Havâdis dated 31 December 1862. The difference reflects contemporary calendar conversion and the distinction between announcement and commencement dates; serious descriptions should state the convention used rather than treat every date as a separate emission.

Creating the Tughra issue

Production was entrusted to the Darbhane-i Âmire, the Imperial Mint. Specialist Turkish research identifies Ser-Sikkeken Abdülfettah Efendi, the Mint’s chief engraver, and Ensercioğlu Agop Efendi, responsible for the lithographic work, with the preparation of the design and printing. Agah Efendi supplied the administrative initiative; the Mint supplied the artistic and technical workshop; the Ministry of Finance authorized the completed sheets through its control band.

The central device is Sultan Abdülaziz’s tughra: “Abd ül-Aziz Han bin Mahmud el-muzaffer daima (Abdülaziz Khan, son of Mahmud, ever victorious). Beneath it lies a crescent inscribed Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniyye, “The Sublime Ottoman State,” with the denomination below. The tughra had long served as the sovereign’s signature and seal on decrees and coins; on the stamp it performed a role comparable to a monarch’s portrait or royal cypher in European philately.

The stamps were imperforate, gummed and unwatermarked. Their black designs were lithographed on white paper at the Mint, after which the sheets were surface-coloured—described in contemporary Turkish research as colouring with sponges or related manual methods. This produced the remarkable range of pale, deep and uneven shades familiar to specialists. The sheets then passed to the Ministry of Finance, where a band repeating Devlet-i Aliyye Nezareti Maliye was applied. Kuyaş emphasized that a stamp lacking the control band was technically unfinished and possessed no postal validity.

One design, three printings

The phrase “first issue” conceals an important paradox. The first printing, lithographed at the end of 1862, comprised only the 2-kuruş blue and 5-kuruş rose or red values on thin pelure paper. All rows were upright and closely spaced; unlike the later settings, it contained no tête-bêche rows. Although printed first, these stamps were not normally released until 1864, after supplies of the next printing had been consumed.

The second printing was the group first placed before the public: 20 para yellow, 1 kuruş grey-lilac or purple, 2 kuruş blue, and 5 kuruş rose-red, together with four brown or red-brown charge stamps of the same denominations. Alternate horizontal rows were inverted, creating vertical tête-bêche pairs. Dividing lines and wider spaces accommodated the financial control bands. Regular postage values normally show contrasting red or blue bands; the brown charge adhesives generally carry blue controls, although specialists recognize exceptions and shade complexities.

The status of the brown stamps deserves precision. Catalogues conventionally classify them as the first Ottoman postage dues. Turkish postal historians have argued that their intended function was narrower: they were to collect charges on unpaid letters originating in places without a regular post office. On cover, therefore, the context, route and placement of the brown adhesive matter more than the catalogue label alone.

The third printing, generally assigned to late 1863 or 1864, comprised only the 20-para and 1-kuruş values. It used thicker white paper coloured on the surface; alternate rows were again inverted, but vertical dividing lines were absent. No official printing figures survive, and the lithographic stones are not known. A 240-subject sheet—12 by 20—is widely reconstructed, but should be described as the prevailing philatelic view rather than an archival certainty.

Postal use and cancellations

Tughra stamps were initially cancelled with mute grids, bars, dots and devices incorporating the word battal, meaning cancelled or invalidated. Istanbul used distinctive Deraliye types; dotted town-name obliterators appeared toward the end of the Tughra period. Some older office seals continued alongside adhesive frankings. Coles and Walker’s four-volume Postal Cancellations of the Ottoman Empire remains indispensable because it classifies markings geographically across lost European territories, Turkey-in-Europe, Africa and Turkey-in-Asia rather than treating cancellations merely as decorative additions to stamps.

A convincing used stamp should exhibit compatibility among paper, shade, plate characteristics, control band and cancellation. On cover, the postmark must tie the stamp naturally to the paper; rate, route, date, backstamps and contents should form a coherent whole. Mehmet Başaran’s cover census examined more than 950 Tughra covers and described over 300 covers or folded letters, including high frankings, bisects, mixed printings, postage-due usages, overseas destinations and previously unrecorded cancellations.

Among the great showpieces are a Ragusa–Constantinople letter described as the only first-day cover bearing two first-printing 2-kuruş stamps; a Constantinople–Adrianople entire combining first- and second-printing 2-kuruş stamps; the unique cover with a second-printing 1-kuruş tête-bêche pair; and an extraordinary 5-kuruş strip of five on a registered Constantinople–Bucharest letter. A six-stamp 20-para tête-bêche multiple on a Samakov–Constantinople cover has likewise been described in the market as one of the foremost items of Turkish philately.

Bisects, mixed regular-and-due frankings, covers combining Ottoman and Austrian or other foreign-office adhesives, early provincial origins and clearly dated first-printing usages deserve particular scrutiny. Their importance lies not simply in rarity, but in the evidence they provide for rates, shortages, routes and the coexistence of Ottoman and foreign postal systems.

Proofs, forgeries, remainders and authentication

Specialist literature records proof material for the 20-para, 1-kuruş and 5-kuruş denominations, with distinct character types, colouring methods and, in some examples, a mesh-like surface from the colouring process. Proofs without the fiscal band, “used proofs,” tête-bêche multiples, inverted or displaced bands and constant lithographic flaws are legitimate fields of study—but also areas in which terminology is frequently abused by sellers.

Forgeries appeared early. Spiro productions, material associated with Plácido Ramón de Torres, unattributed imitations, fabricated cancellations and forged covers are all recorded. Genuine stamps possess recurrent design and plate features—often called “secret marks”—but authentication should never rest on one dot, break or ornament. Paper, lithographic texture, denomination characters, dividing lines, shade, control band and cancellation must be evaluated together; important items warrant a certificate from a recognized Ottoman specialist.

The term reprint should be used cautiously. The sources retrieved document three contemporary Tughra printings, trials and proofs, but not a clearly established official later Tughra reprint programme. What certainly did exist were substantial obsolete stocks retained by the Ottoman administration. From the 1890s onward officials debated their classification, destruction or sale, and old stamps were eventually prepared for auction to collectors. Such remainders are genuine old stock, not automatically “reprints,” but they also lack the evidential value of contemporary postal use.

Why the Duloz issue is different

The 1865 issue was not a fourth Tughra printing. It introduced a new star-and-crescent design, typography instead of Mint lithography, perforation (initially about 12½) and a broader range including 10 para and 25 kuruş. The central tughra disappeared. Black Ottoman inscriptions, including Posta-i Devlet-i Osmaniye, were printed around the coloured design, and the cumbersome Tughra control-band system was abandoned.

The stamps are traditionally called Duloz, although modern research identifies the engraver as Pierre Edelestand Stanislas Dulos (with an “s”). The design was supplied from Ottoman fiscal circles, engraved in Paris by Dulos and initially typographed by the Poitevin firm. Later printings were made in Istanbul and developed into numerous types, colours, perforations and inscription varieties. Thus Tughra collecting is primarily a study of lithographic settings, papers, colouring and bands; Duloz collecting is a study of typographic types, perforations, inscriptions and successive printing establishments.

The collector’s perspective

The fascination of the Tughra issue lies in its contradictions. It is an indigenous imperial design born from European-inspired reform; a postal adhesive manufactured at a mint; a simple-looking stamp whose validity depended upon a second fiscal operation; and an “issue of 1863” whose first-printed components appeared after the stamps printed second.

The most persuasive collection therefore moves beyond catalogue spaces. It begins with menzil and pre-stamp covers, establishes the administrative reform of 1840, demonstrates the three Tughra printings through stamps and multiples, and culminates in covers proving real rates, routes and cancellations. In that sequence, the Tughra becomes what it was in 1863: not merely the first Ottoman stamp, but the portable emblem of a modernizing imperial state.

Source notes

  • Adolf Passer, The Stamps of Turkey (Royal Philatelic Society London, 1938), remains the classic English foundation; its Tughra chapters and plates are still repeatedly cited in forgery literature.
  • Tevfik Kuyaş, “The Postage Stamps of Turkey, 1863–64,” read to the Royal Philatelic Society London in 1974, is the essential concise account of the three printings.
  • Mehmet Başaran, One Man’s Journey into the Unknown and Cover Story, are the principal modern specialist studies of the stamps and covers.
  • John H. Coles and Howard E. Walker, Postal Cancellations of the Ottoman Empire, is the standard four-volume cancellation reference.
  • German-language study is represented by AROS, whose Handbuch der türkischen Philatelie includes separate volumes on Tughra and Duloz stamps, rates and postmarks.
  • French philately engaged with the issue almost immediately: Pierre Mahé published his first priced Guide-Manuel in June 1863, only months after the Ottoman stamps appeared.
  • Turkish foundations include works by Şekip Eskin, Asaf Tanrıkut, Yusuf Halaçoğlu, Mustafa Hilmi Bayındır, Ara Garmiryan, Turhan Turgut, İSFİLA, Pulko and Pulhan; the Academy of Turkish Philately also provides access to major Tughra and Duloz exhibits.

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