Stamp of efficiency

Stamp of efficiency

Milad Zaki

The secod day of January marks Egyptian Post Day, the day when Egyptian post became a service handled by the Egyptian government. Watani commemorates the occasion by a briefing on the exciting history of the post in Egypt

 

One of Egypt’s oldest establishments is its postal system, regarded as one of the features of the modern age. The word ‘postage’ is derived from the series of riders that carried messages from staging post to staging post. It was Caliph Mo'awia Bin Abi-Sufian who, it is said, introduced a postal system to Egypt. Messages were carried by horses which were changed at designated, equally spaced stops. The word bareed (post) first appeared during the Mamluk era, applied to a rider wearing a silver or copper badge. The modern postal system as we know it today was developed by Mohamed Ali Pasha, who ruled from 1805 to 1848. The service was primarily for the use of the State and enabled the central government to remain informed of daily developments all across the pasha's expanding realm. Written messages from Alexandria reached Cairo within 24 hours, and it took 50 days for an identical missive to reach Khartoum which Mohamed Ali conquered in 1821. The chief of the postal couriers at the time was Sheikh Omar Hamad, while a small postal administration for public messages and letters was established by his successor Sheikh Hassan al-Badihi, yet without a predetermined fee for the message for which a deal was made at a coffee shop in the Muski (Cairo bazaar).

 

Egypt and Sudan

The government later took over responsibility for the task of carrying public letters all over Egypt and Sudan for fees ranging from 2.5 to 7.5 millimes. But the need for someone to manage a wider-scale service became evident as the quantity and destination of correspondence rapidly swelled, especially with the arrival of rising numbers of foreigners who came to reside or work in Egypt. This person came in the form of an Italian, Carlo Meratti, who launched a private courier service between Egypt and Europe, and later within Egypt itself.

As his service expanded, Meratti installed his postal system’s head office at the Place des Consuls, Alexandria's main square. On his death the company was taken over by Meratti’s nephew Tito Chini (d.1864) and the latter’s associate the Italian Giacomo Muzzi. Despite their valuable contributions to Egypt’s modern postal service, Meratti and Chini are not as historically connected with the development of Egypt’s first private service as was their countryman Giacomo Muzzi. In 1854 Muzzi opened branches of his ‘Posta Europea’ in the prosperous Delta towns of Damietta, Rosetta, Tanta and Damanhour, as well as in Upper Egypt. That year also saw the opening of Egypt’s first railway link between Cairo and Alexandria. Posta Europea wasted no time in concluding a profitable arrangement with the Egyptian Transit Authority for the exclusive transport of its mail for the annual sum of EGP870. Signing on behalf of the authority was Egypt’s future prime minister, the Armenian Nubar Nubarian Pasha. Similar concessions were denied to the other private postal services for an initial five year period starting from 1856.

 

Free post

In 1862, Posta Europea gained permission from the Egyptian government to transport its mail without cost for ten years, in return for sorting the official mail and carrying it free of charge. In the same year, the Egyptian government had to withdraw its post offices when Posta Europea expanded and opened post offices all over Egypt. When the owners of Posta Europea found themselves charged with a great responsibility—19 offices at that time—they sent to the management of Italian post asking for provision of qualified Italian employees. This was during the era of Khedive Ismail (1863 – 1879), who was convinced that the postal service was a public utility that should only be run by the government. Khedive Ismail negotiated with Muzzi to purchase Posta Europea for 950,000 francs, registering the contract on 29 October 1864. The deal was ratified for the benefits of the Egyptian government on 2 January 1865, remembered as the birthday of the Egyptian Post Department.

In appreciation of his efforts, the Egyptian government offered Muzzi the position of general manager of the department and granted him the title of ‘Bey’. Muzzi thus became the first manager of the Post Department, which was named the Khedivian Post.

Egyptian seals

In its early years the Post Department was affiliated to the Ministry of Finance, which in 1865 approved a list of provisions stipulating that the Egyptian government monopolise the transport of mail and issuance of postage stamps bearing the Egyptian Post Department’s seal instead of foreign seals.

In January 1866 the first group of Egyptian stamps—with drawings—was printed for the Egyptian government by Muzzi Bey in seven categories in Genoa, Italy.

According to a decree in 1867 from the Khedive, the Egyptian Post Department became under the supervision of Sherif Pasha, the then minister of interior and finance. In 1871, Saba Pasha was assigned as the first Egyptian manager of one of the post offices and was gradually promoted until he became the general manager of post in 1887.

The department was affiliated to the Ministry of Justice in 1875; the Ministry of Agriculture 1876; and the Ministry of Finance in 1878. The post site changed venues several times. In 1874 it was at the Posta Street in Alexandria, and in December 1888 it moved to its current site in Ataba Square in Cairo. The World Postal Union was founded on 9 October 1874 in Bern following an aggregation of 22 countries—Egypt included. Member countries now number 191. Since 1981, member countries have celebrated the foundation of the World Postal Union with a unified logo.

Tribute

On June 2, 1919 Sultan Fouad (afterwards king from 1922 until his death in 1936) decreed that henceforth the Poste Egyptienne would be the responsibility of the newly-created Ministry of Communications which also included the railways and telegram and telephone services.

The Post Department stayed under the control of the royal family until the 1952 Revolution, when it was allocated an individual budget. This put an end to the foreign-run post offices and, in 1957 the Egyptian Post Authority was founded to replace the Post Department. Two years later civil post offices were established, followed by in 1961the first postal school.

In 1966, President Gamal Abdel-Nasser issued a decree to establish the Public Post Authority to replace the Post Authority. The name was again changed in 1982, this time to the National Post Authority; this body was placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications and Information in 1999.

The commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the World Postal Union in February 1934 marked the peak of Egypt’s postal history, with Cairo playing host to the 10th Universal Postal Congress. Its president was Egypt’s minister of communication, Ibrahim Fahmi Karim Pasha. To mark the occasion, two commemorative stamps bearing the portrait of Khedive Ismail were issued as a tribute to the man who introduced the first modern postal administration to Egypt, and under whose reign the first Egyptian stamp was issued in 1866.