Iraq, like the other neighbor countries was under the Ottoman Empire. It used mainly its stamps. Also it used stamps from different Levant countries and British India. Here we have an Ottoman stamp with a clean bilingual Baghdad cds. Also an older ottoman stamp pair boxstamped with Baghdad in Arabic.
This is the second Iraqi stamp set, the first one beared Baghdad instead of Iraq, this first issue is very very rare and each stamp of it has a big value. This second set is not rare, the high values have some values.
Iraqi post offices had a big stock of Ottoman stamps, for that they used it.
What I scanned is the rare specimen set:
Between 1917 and 1921 Bradbury Wilkinson produced specimen sheets of certain values of the British Occupation set for their own archives. These stamps can be recognised by the fact that each has been punched by a diamond of four dots control mark. The scarcest value is the 1½ annas on 5 paras of which less than 100 examples were produced, and interestingly this is the only value that is not known with the normal perforated "SPECIMEN" overprint. S.G. 1-14 var.. Very scarce and attractive.
Here we have a nice assembly of Iraqi used stamps, with some officials, the first 4 stamps are the first pictorial Iraqi set from half anna to 10 rupees, then Iraq was declared by the British as a kingdom under British mandate. Emir Faical of Arabia was declared King. Then remark the change in the currency to 1000 fils=1dinar. After King Faical, came King Ghazi (second row at right). He died early, his son Faical II was still a child (Third row at right). He was crowned later on.
Complete official set of King Faical II, also this set was overprinted by a special character when the Republic was declared, general Kassem ruled the country and King Faical II was killed, the stamps do not bear the Republic overprint, see a later image
As can be seen, all previous issues, the second one is the old dinar value portraying King Ghazi, have been overprinted by "Iraqi Republic", it is the only one issued with the overprint. The first set was mostly still in use
What remain in stock of this issue of King Faical II was overprinted
Basically they ran from 1fils to the 1 dinar value, interesting sets