Yemen Cancels
1930 to 1962

This group of pages shows the German-made Yemen cancels and their variants that were used from 1930 to about 1962 as well as several locally-made cancels. The German-made cancels came in at least two forms. The cancels shown on Page 1 include the name of the city in Arabic and in its Western equivalent and the dates in Arabic and its Western equivalent. There is a cancel that is a possible locally-made exception also shown on this page. The Page 2s show cancels that include the name of the city in Arab and its Western equivalent and the dates in the Arabic form only. Page 3 shows several cancels that are in Arabic only.

The German-made cancels were replaced for the major cities of Hodeidah, Sana'a and Taiz around 1950. An Egyptian-made cancel was used on some covers. I will add an image of the Taiz cancel. Bruce Condé has images of a variety of locally-made cancels that were used to replace the German-made cancels as they wore out or as their life cycles ended. I will try to add images of these cancels at a later date. The German-made cancels were made for a 20-year date period, but some were used still used with the date unchanged.1

Your comments, suggestions and images of other cancels are welcome. I will add further groups of pages as I find examples and can get permission from the authors and journals.

My thanks to M.A.M. Graham and the Journal of the Oriental Philatelic Association of London for permission to include these images. Lou Dearlove was responsible for the accurate drawings of these cancels.2

Sources:
1. Conde, Bruce. "Yemen Postal Markings: The Kingdom of Yemen" in The Congress Book, David Lidman, editor, The American Philatelic Congress, 1957, pp 49 - 63.
2. Graham, M. and L. Dearlove. "Yemen Cancellations - An Update" in Journal of the Oriental Philatelic Society of London, number 197, October 1999, pp 40 - 46.

Yemen Cancels Index Page | Page 1 | Page 2a | Page 2b | Page 2c | Page 2d | Page 3 | Yemen Index Page