Jubilee Jamboree — overprinted QATAR

Qatar marked the IX World Scout Jamboree at Doha on 1 August 1957 with the same device Bahrain and Muscat used that day: the British Jubilee Jamboree stamps overprinted QATAR and surcharged in naye paise, all in black. Qatar was then a Persian Gulf Agency of Great Britain and had no stamps of its own design. Domfil catalogues the three as 957.16/18.

The base stamps are the Great Britain set for the jamboree — the Scout badge with coiled rope at 2½d, the medallion and swallows at 4d, and the globe with compass rose and Scout fleur-de-lis at 1s 3d — surcharged 15, 25 and 75 naye paise respectively. Qatar is unusual in carrying the same number, 16 to 18, in Scott, Michel, Yvert and Stanley Gibbons alike; its philatelic record was short enough that the catalogues never diverged.

Two source caveats. SOSOW gives the printings as 155,041, 154,705 and 154,080 — figures identical to those on its Muscat page, which suggests one of the two was copied from the other; they should not be relied on without a second source. And Domfil dates the issue 1 January, which cannot be right: the base stamps themselves were not issued until 1 August, the opening day of the jamboree.

All three values are in the collection.