Title 1916 Egypt Alexandria Attarine Mosque WWI Written Soldier Message Vintage Postcard
Front A sepia-toned halftone photographic view within a wide cream border, printed in portrait orientation so the image reads with the card turned. There is no printed caption on the front; the title appears on the reverse.
The subject is the Attarine Mosque (Mosquée Attarine) in Alexandria, viewed across the surrounding rooftops and street. The composition is dominated by the mosque's tall, slender Ottoman-style minaret rising against an empty pale sky. The shaft is built in a series of superimposed stages: a square or polygonal base articulated with tall recessed panels and blind arcading; above it a plain drum band; then a stage of pierced arcaded openings; a projecting muezzin's balcony carried on corbelling with a decorative railing; a further upper stage of small arched openings and slender colonnettes; a second smaller gallery; and a narrow terminal lantern crowned with a bulbous finial and pointed cap.
Beneath and around the minaret spread the flat roofs and upper storeys of the surrounding quarter. To one side is the mosque's own long façade, rendered pale, with a regular sequence of tall arched and rectangular windows in moulded surrounds and a heavy cornice. Adjacent buildings show dark shuttered windows, roof parapets, projecting eaves, and rooftop clutter typical of an Alexandrian street. In the middle distance a group of ships' masts with crossed yards is visible, indicating proximity to the harbour, together with what appear to be poles, wires, or awning frames. At street level, small indistinct figures and a low awning or stall structure can be made out.
Condition notes visible on the front: warm apricot and sepia toning throughout, faint vertical handling creases across the sky, light surface soiling, minor edge and corner wear.
Back Divided back, printed in black on buff-cream stock, with the whole surface covered by a handwritten pencil message running vertically across both panels. Printed text, in full:
Across the upper centre, in spaced sans-serif capitals: "POST CARD EGYPT"
Upper left corner, vertically: "L. C. - 31."
Lower left, in two lines: "ALEXANDRIA. - Attarine Mosque." above "ALEXANDRIE. - Mosquée Attarine."
A dotted vertical dividing rule runs down the centre. Three dotted address rules and a heavy solid rule appear on the address side, with a dotted stamp box at the upper right.
Handwritten message in pencil, transcribed in full:
"Dear Ruby Just a few lines to Egypt gate so that I am still above ground I am having a good time, well as good as can be expected in this place. Beard grand service has enlarged it Ttrue, from lucky to them it has, as a all are needed. There cang be may left in East Africa now. Remember to Mater & Pater. Good-bye George S."
The transcription is offered as read; the pencil is faint and several words are difficult to resolve with certainty.
A pencil annotation at the upper left, in a later collector's hand, reads: "WW1 Serapeum" and beneath it the date "21-2-16".
No stamp remains and there is no postmark; the card appears to have been sent under cover or carried, as was common with military correspondence.
Reverse condition: buff stock with even toning, pencil writing legible but light, roughness along the upper edge, light corner wear, no album or hinge remnants.
Estimated Era Dated 21 February 1916, during the First World War.
The date is supplied directly by the annotation accompanying the message, and the content of the letter corroborates a wartime military context. The writer refers to Egypt, to being "still above ground", to a service having been enlarged, and to forces left in East Africa, all consistent with a British or Imperial serviceman writing home during the Egyptian campaign. The reference to Serapeum, a post on the Suez Canal defence line held by British and Anzac troops in 1915 and 1916, places the sender on the canal front following the withdrawal from Gallipoli in January 1916, when large numbers of troops were concentrated in Egypt before redeployment.
The card itself is of a slightly earlier commercial production, a bilingual English and French Egyptian tourist issue with the series reference "L. C. - 31." The divided back, dotted stamp box, and sans-serif "POST CARD EGYPT" heading are typical of Alexandria and Cairo publishers of roughly 1908 to 1920. Such stock was bought in quantity by soldiers passing through Alexandria and Cairo during the war.