Which is more important? Is it the honesty of the description or the generosity of the most generous? I believe this question crossed the mind of His Majesty King Farouk in late 1945. At that time, preparations were in full swing to receive King Abdulaziz Al Saud in the Kingdom of Egypt. King Farouk had decided to honor his guest and commemorate the royal visit on Egyptian postage stamps, ordering that the stamps be released to the public precisely on the day of King Abdulaziz's arrival in Egypt, January 10, 1946. Given the importance of the event, especially since the issuance was a royal decree, Egyptian artists presented their best design proposals, most of which centered around two swords, one Arab and the other Pharaonic. However, the final decision settled on a simple design of the two countries' flags crossed, and that the stamp be printed in a uniform green color, emphasizing their similarity even in national colors. But the designers faced a problem: the Saudi Arabian flag bears the Shahada (the Islamic declaration of faith), and Arabic script dictates that the word "La" (no) should be closest to the hoist, not the other way around. Therefore, the Saudi flag would be placed on the left, not the right, as protocol dictates, especially since the right is the... The honor center. (Note: It's unfortunate that many people are now unaware of this and are displaying the Saudi flag incorrectly!) The matter was presented to King Farouk for his decision, and he decided that the Saudi flag should be placed in the honor center, to the right of the Egyptian flag, without regard for technical accuracy. This is perhaps one of the rarest cases in the world of stamps\u2014a stamp being issued with an error despite those responsible for it being aware of it even before its release! (Moheb Rizkallah)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Which is more important? The accuracy of the description or the generosity of the hosts? I believe this question crossed the mind of His Majesty King Farouk in late 1945. At that time, preparations were in full swing to receive King Abdulaziz Al Saud in the Kingdom of Egypt, and King Farouk had decided to honor his guest and commemorate the royal visit on Egyptian postage stamps, ordering that the stamps be issued\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":[],"wpupg_custom_link_nofollow":[],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[337,383,368],"class_list":["post-272089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philately","tag-337","tag-383","tag-368"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabcollector.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}