1950 Diplomatic passport
Egyptian consular issue for the UN.
When it comes to rare collectibles – the item here can truly be considered as a treasure and not an item one can see every day. The combination of it being a diplomatic passport, post-WWII, and also a consular issue as well makes it even a rarer artifact and to add to it the reason for being issued, well, sometimes such a cluster of conditions are truly remarkable. About 4 years ago this item surfaced and it ended up in an archive abroad. Today, I have decided to write about it and share the images with other historians and collectors.
1950 Egyptian diplomatic passport numbered 3/1950 was issued at Paris on September 12th to Mahmoud Aboulfath, who by then was a distinguished Egyptian statesman who owned an important daily back at home, the Al-Misri. He was also a close friend and ally to Egyptian Politian who would become president: Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Nasser led a coup to overthrow the royal monarchy 2 years after the passport in this article was issued. He would become officially the President in June of 1956.
Mahmoud Aboulfath was issued the passport that enabled him to travel from Paris to the United Nations as a member of the Egyptian delegation to New York. Inside we can find important diplomatic visas as well from various countries.
He would be forced to leave his country into exile abroad after his friend Nasser would became more ruthless and reveal the true totalitarian tendencies and nature of his regime, and by 1955, when already living in Lebanon, he would send an important letter to the attendees at the infamous Asian conference called the Bandung Conference, where 29 country delegates met for 6 days on April of 1955, with the goal of fighting colonialism and strengthen the ties between all participants in the fields of economy and culture. The letter that was sent by Mahmoud Aboulfath was to address also the issue of human rights among the nations.
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
