Description
Hall & Company Jaffa forwarding agents via German Holy Land post office: 1907 era postmarked picture postcard (Jerusalem - Dome of the Rock interior), sent from JAFFA to addressee at hotel in BRIGHTON (Britain); the franking is missing but as the postcard bears a message longer than 5 words (on front) the rate was likely overseas postcard at 20 para, here tied by the local German post office postmark whose date is mostly missing but faintly identifiable as "1907" (the post office opened in 1898) + tied by oval cachet of Hall & Co. Jaffa - likely a business run by David Hall.
Hall was the son of Moritz Hall (1838-1914), a Jew from Crakow with metal smelting experience, who moved to Ethiopia & converted to Christianity and later moved to Jaffa (1874), working within the Missionary movement, then a proprietor of the Hotel du Parc and receiving the protection of the German consulate, serving as its Honorary Dragoman and interpreter; his son, David (1876-1971), born in Jaffa and later moving to Ethiopia founded an import-export firm called Hall & Son - and this is likely the office which forwarded this mail. The Hall family is related to the actor Peter Ustinov and Moritz himself was a friend of the Israeli nobel prize winner Shmuel Yosef Agnon.
