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Stamps of Lebanon


1924 Some Mandate Stamps Issues, Overprint Arabic and French

After using only a French overprint, some months later an Arabic overprint was added on the same stamps. The French Stamps used were Mersons, Sowers, Allegory, Pasteur, Olympic Games, for both overprint, and in the Second we have an overprint over Ronsard stamp. Because the French Mandate on Lebanon and Syria began on 1924, These two countries emitted two nice commemorative sets representing the Olympic games in Paris 24. Each country has the 2 different overprint. These sets are rather rare and are looked for by many philatelists.

This pair is very valuable. First it is linked by interpanneau, many french stamps were printed like that. Second it is used on piece by a superb circular date stamp showing Tripoli de Syrie. It is well known that now Tripoli is in Lebanon, but as I said in the previous paragraph, Syria was forming all the land which comprises now Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and parts of Jordan and Iraq. Third it contains an error: Look at the last line in the arabic overprint, in each stamp the second and the third character are inverted. For those who know Arabic, the correct overprint reads "grouch" (piastres), and the error overprint reads "gourch".