Manama Post Office
In an odd quirk of philatelic history, several of the Trucial States (prior to the formation of the UAE) issued stamps in huge and incongruous editions. I say incongruous, because none of them had anything to do with the UAE. I have a full sheet of 'Kings and queens of England' issued by Umm Al Qawain and others include celebrations of the Moscow Olympics and the space race.
Why?
Ask American philatelic entrepreneur (say that quickly after a couple of shandies) Finbar Kenny. As I have related before, Kenny travelled to the Trucial States in the early 1960s and did deals with the rulers of various emirates to issue stamps on their behalf. He then produced massive runs of stamps, which were destined to act as filler in every boy's stamp collection. In fact he overdid it so much that these 'Dunes' stamps are totally worthless even today. Stamps from Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain and Fujeirah dating from the '60s can be picked up for pennies still.
Kenny, a somewhat colourful figure, signed up Ajman and so you can find stamp dealers still selling, stamps issued from 'Manama, Dependency of Ajman'. Manama, an inland exclave of Ajman in Sharjah (it's East of Dhaid, just off the Dhaid/Masafi highway) consisted at the time of little more than an adobe fort, a few cinder block houses and a tiny post office. That post office, responsible for issuing what must have been millions of stamps, is why we nipped off the beaten path for a few minutes yesterday, in order I could track down and take a snap of the offending institution.
So here it is in all its sleepy glory. In its time, one of the great stamp issuing centres of the world!
