Penguins, Umm al Qiwain

I know I said that for this round of the alphabet I will (try) not to go with the easiest solution - countries, but I feel kinda lazy today (tell me something new) and just can't put those brain cells into extra thinking, so I'm just gonna cheat on my own 'resolution' this time :))

And I really could have used these Penguins last week, but then they didn't even cross my mind, so here they come in handy for the letter Q.

This set of 6 Penguin stamps was issued in 1972 in Umm al Qiwain, which is one of the seven sovereign Emirates in the UAE and is the least populous one. It issued its own stamps from 1964 to 1972.
The first post office in Umm al-Qiwain was opened in 1963 by the British Postal Agencies in Eastern Arabia. The Agencies were set up in 1948 to provide postal services to several countries in the region. Mail was processed via Dubai using the stamps issued for the Trucial States until 1964, the year in which Umm al-Qiwain also issued its first stamps (when it was a British Protectorate). After joining the United Arab Emirates in 1971, Umm al-Qaiwain continued to issue stamps until the issues of Umm al-Qaiwain were replaced by those of the United Arab Emirates in 1973.

Interesting to see that a country like this would issue something totally unrelated to it like Penguins, that live in climates so opposite than the one in the Emirates

Here you can see:

- the Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica (shown on the first, fourth and sixth stamp).

- The long-tailed gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua), shown on the third stamp

- The macaroni penguin (Eudyptes chrysolophus), a species of penguin found from the subantarctic to the Antarctic Peninsula and one of six species of crested penguin (shown on the second stamp)

- The Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) (also termed Peruvian penguin, or patranca) - a South American penguin that breeds in coastal Chile and Peru and was named after the cold water current it swims in, which is itself named after Alexander von Humboldt, an explorer. The species is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN. (it is shown on the fifth stamp).

yeah, sorry for the total disorder in the scanning of stamps...

so before you go on with your daily activities, check the rest of the Q-entries for today, an interesting letter nevertheless :)

Her Highness Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak - Mother of the Nation, UAE

Usually with stamps I can tell what they are about based on the image or the text...with this one I was just lost based on both...the image itself kinda resembled either some flower or crown..but since the text is in Arabic, I couldn't get anything from that - this is one of those languages where I cannot even type it into google translate and see what I get...

Turns out this issue had something to do with Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi (is like a logo or something)...and of course I have never heard about her...till now. She is the third wife of the founder and the first president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the late emir (ruler) of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. She is firstly called mother of sheikhs and then mother of the UAE or nation.


She is one of the women rights supporters in the country and has also done campaigns for girls' education and supports adult literacy and provision of free public education to girls.


In 1997, five different organizations of the United Nations, UNICEF, WHO, UNIFEM, UNFP and UNFPA, awarded Sheikha Fatima for her significant efforts for women's rights and the UNIFEM stated "she is the champion of women's rights". She was also awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order by the then Tunisian president Zine el Abidine ben Ali in 2009 for her contributions to raise the status of Arab women. Much more significantly she was given by the UNESCO the Marie Curie Medal for her efforts in education, literacy and women's rights, being the third international and the first Arab recipient of the award.

WOW! So many achievements and shame on me, had no idea who she was =/

Now it made me wonder if maybe I should have saved this for the subject on 'women'....but I think I have some other nice choices for that one...from a country not far away from this one, so you'll have to stay tuned :)

Date of Issue 24 July 2011
Width 40.0 mm
Height 40.0 mm
Denomination 1.00 AED
Perforations 13.5 by 13.5

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