Bushire is a seaport city in Iran. In 1915, Britain occupied the city for about two months (Iran was then called Persia). During this time, the Brits used Persian postage stamps, adding English overprints that read ‘BUSHIRE Under British Occupation.’. First, four different Persian stamps, issued between 1911 and 1913, were used; after that, 1915 stamps were used for the overprints.
Note that, of the 1911-1913 stamps, varieties exist both with and without the final period in the overprint for most of the series. Bushire overprint stamps without the period are worth more; all Bushire occupation stamps, however, tend to be rare.
Although Britain used the spelling BUSHIRE on their occupation stamps, that is only one way of transliterating the Persian name into English, and not necessarily the most common these days. Because of these overprinted stamps, however, that is nearly always how it is listed in sales offers. Sellers from non-English speaking countries may spell it differently, however; watch for variations.
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Persian: بوشهر
French: Bouchehr
German: Buschehr
Dutch: Bushehr
We also include covers to and from Bushire from any era in this section.
