TEHRAN -- The first Islamic stamp issued by the United States Postal Service is on display in Mashhad’s Astan-e Qods Razavi Museum in the Stamp and Banknote Section.

The director of the section, Mohammad-Hossein Yazdinejad, said that the stamp was issued in 2005 on Id al-Fitr and it was reissued on Id al-Adha in 2006. The "Id Mubarak" stamp translates literally as "blessed festival," and can be paraphrased as "May your religious holiday be blessed."

The Id stamp commemorates the two most important festivals or Ids in the Islamic calendar. Id al-Adha marks the end of the hajj. Id al-Fitr, or the feast of the fast-breaking, celebrates the end of the month of Ramadan.

The stamp was designed by American-born Islamic calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya. Zakariya, 57, studied calligraphy after he converted to Islam and has since become one of the most accomplished Islamic calligraphers in the United States. The script is known in Arabic as Sols. Zakariya describes it as "the choice script for a complex composition due to its open proportions and sense of balance."

The designer used homemade black ink, and pens made from seasoned reeds from the Near East and Japanese bamboo from Hawaii. The paper was specially prepared with a coating of starch and three coats of alum and egg-white varnish, then burnished with an agate stone and aged for more than a year.

The Stamp and Banknote Section of the Astan-e Qods Razavi Museum houses a rich collection of rare stamps from about 160 countries and is visited by many Iranian and foreign pilgrims, tourists, and philatelists.