Vartashen

I did some research regarding the Vartashen cancel.

This is what I found in the Ashford “Russian stamps used in Transcaucasia”:

VARTASHEN (Village) (Post Telegraph sub-office)

North of the railway line, Vartashen was an isolated village in the foothills of the Caucasian mountains, about 25 versts to the south east of Nukha. The P.O. was opened after 1893. Apart from a poor example of a cancellation on a stamp of Soviet Azerbaijan, no sightings can be reported. E.S.Voikhansky (sic) lists both an “a” and a “b” double circle script letter datestamps for Vartashen from the Azerbaijan period. Neither of thene, however, can be illustrated.

So I obviously got an impression of the double circle script letter “b” datestamp. Nukha is nowadays Shaki (or Sheki). I could not find a clear information about the village or town of Vartashen on the internet. Most likely it is a village near Oguz called Vartashenkyshlak. Oguz has a 2008 population of about 6.800 inhabitants. The whole area was very remote and sparsely inhabited. The cancel is probably quite rare and we can illustrate it now 🙂

 

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One Response to Vartashen

  1. Ivo Steijn says:

    Opened in October 1899 as a p.o., upgraded to p.t.o. in June 1912, according to that useful file!

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