"مذكرة حول مطالبة تركيا بالسيادة على السواحل الشرقية للبحر الأحمر والجزيرة العربية بالكامل، ومطالبة مصر بالسيادة على الساحل الغربي بالكامل للبحر الأحمر أيضاً بما في ذلك الساحل الإفريقي من السويس حتى رأس عسير." [ظ‎‎١‎٠] (٧٠/٢٠)

16
Zeyla has more than once been occupied by the
Turks, and Captain Burton gives the following
account of the original occupation of the town by
them about the year 1500:—
"When the Turks conquered Yemen (about Burton, page 68=
1500) the lawless janissaries 'who lived upon the
very bowels of commerce' drove the peaceable
Arab merchants to the opposite shore. The trade
of India, flying from the same enemy, took refuge
in Adel, amongst its partners (Adel, Arabia, and
India being then, according to Bruce, partners in
one trade, who eventually exported their produce to
Europe, Asia, and Africa, at that time the whole
known world).
" The Turks of Arabia, though they were blind to
the cause, were sensible of the great influx of wealth
into the opposite kingdom. They took possession,
therefore, of Zeyla, which they made a den of
thieves ; established there what they called a Custom
house ; and by means of that port, and galleys
cruizing in the narrow Straits of Babelmandeb, they
laid the Indian trade to Adel under heavy contri
bution, that might indemnify them for the great
desertion their violence and injustice had occasioned
in Arabia."
Captain Burton then alludes to the occupation of
other parts of the coasts of the Red Sea by the
Turks. He says :—
" The Turks, under a show of protecting Ibid., page €9, note,
commerce, established three ports in three different
parts ; but they soon made it appear that the end
proposed was only to ascertain who were the subjects
from whom they could levy the most enormous
extortions. Jeddah, Zebid, and Mocha, the places
of consequence nearest to Abyssinia on the Indian
coast j Suakin, a seaport town on the very barrier
of Abyssinia, in the immediate way of the caravans
to Cairo, on the African side, were each under the
command of a Turkish Pasha, and garrisoned by
Turkish troops sent thither from* Constantinople by
the Emperors Selim and Sulayman. 5 '
At the time when Captain Burton visited Zeyla—
in 1854—Hajj Sharmarkaj was Governor of the
place, and he gave Captain Burton a Table showing Ibid., page is.
that he was the sixteenth in descent from the
founder of the Gerhajis and Awul tribes.
Sharmarkay succeeded, about the year 1841, as Ibid., page 19.