How to identify Arabic (Saudi Arabia) Stamps
One of the difficulties when attempting to identify foreign stamps, is that sometimes, none of the writing on the stamps is even remotely readable by many English speaking people and thus makes identifying these types of stamps very difficult. Stamps with Arabic writing on them is particularly difficult, but there are ways to make it much easier.
When I sort stamps from difficult areas like Arabic or Asian countries, I try & sort them by denomination and year. With Arabic stamps, most people cannot even make out the denomination unless they can read Arabic.
Here is a scan of some stamps I have with Arabic writing on them.
My first attempts at this years ago was very frustrating, but I have developed a method that works very well for me & I will try & explaining it below.
An extremely useful tool I use is an Arabic to Western numeral image as shown below. I have this printed and at hand when I process Arabic stamps
With this available to me, I can read the denominations and easily identify my stamps
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1/2 -
1/8 -
1 1/2
The stamp on the Left has a denomination of ½ para, the middle has a denomination of 1/8 para and the rightmost stamp is denominated 1½ paras. See if you can determine the denominations of the following 5 stamps?
Combinations of the above Arabic characters are used to show multiple digit numbers, so 35pa would be as shown below. We hope this helps you in identifying these somewhat difficult stamps.
