'Administration Report of the Persian Gulf Political Residency for the Years 1911-1914' [‎14r] (32/488)

POLITICAL RESIDENCY An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. FOR 1911.
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restoration of order on the roads by the use of our sowars, involving, as it
would do, the loss of a source of blackmail which the various Khans along
the road have come to regard as a permanent one, was naturally viewed by
the interested parties with undisguised, if passive disfavour.
The Khan of Borasjun, Ghazanfar-es-Sultaneh, who, in 1909 {vide
Administration Report), made himself conspicuous by his discourteous treat
ment of a detachment of British troops en route for Shiraz, now took an
active part in anti-foreign intrigues, and though he made no attempt to
interfere with the first party of 2 squadrons, which went up the road, in
November, he must be held in some degree responsible for the hostile attitude
adopted by the tribes further up the road to the second party, which culmi
nated in the attack of December 24th. It is interesting to note here that,
during this unrest, Haidar Khan of Hayat Daud kept aloof, as far as is
known, from any sort of anti-British propaganda and in his conversations
with Haji Rais-up-Tujjar of Mohammerah, who visited him in connection
with the endeavour to effect the safe conduct of the Nizam-es-Sultaneh from
the neighbourhood of Daliki to Mohammerah, he adopted a discreet and
satisfactory attitude, saying that it was not worth his while to take sides
one way or the other or to do anything to bring himself into conflict with
the British authorities, on whose good faith he relied and whose good-will
was a valuable asset which he was anxious to retain.
The situation at Shiraz dominated the political horizon of Fars and
indeed of South-Western Persia gene-
Disturbances at Shiraz. ralIy ^^ghout the year, almost to the
exclusion of other questions. The number of important personalities in
volved, and the interdependence of the forces at work in Shiraz and Tehran
make it extremely difficult to give in a moderate compass an intelligible
resume of the complicated intrigues of which the Province was a victim, and
of the anarchy which resulted from their miscarriage.
It seems best to commence by enumerating very briefly the principal
personalities involved, and their political predilections.
Nizam-es-SultaneJi had been appointed Governor-General of Fars in
order to restore order on the roads, in the hope that by so doing he might
render unnecessary the execution of our intention, adumbrated in our note
of 1910, to take measures ourselves with that object. He was an able but
unscrupulous man; a close friend of the Shaikh of Mohammerah, in touc^i
with the Wali of Pusht-i-Kuh; and with a large stake in Fars, as in Arabis-
tan, in the shape of extensive and valuable estates. Whilst himself not
definitely hostile to the Bakhtiaris (as were his friends the Shaikh and the
Wali) his interest generally tended to run counter to theirs.
With the Kawami family he was from the first persona largely,
it is said, for family reasons, his forbears having occupied a subordinate, if
not a menial, position under the ancestors of the present Kawam-ul-Mulk.
But when at Bushire he repeatedly assured the Resident, as he had the
Shaikh of Mohammerah a few days previously, that he was fully alive to the
fact that his only chance of solving the problems of Fars was to find a modus
vivendi between the Kawam and the Sowlet and to render himself independ
ent of both. The latter's action, however, in coming to meet him at Bushire
upset his calculations, and he found himself committed, before he parted
company with Sowlet, to the acceptance for the time being of tht offers ot
co-operation adroitly thrust upon him by that Chief. He went a step further
in this direction before arriving at Shiraz in appointing Kashgai nominees
to the Governorships of Behbehan and Dashtistan, whereby he provoked the
active resentment of the Bakhtiaris as well as of the Kawamis. He lett
Bushire, however, with every intention, it seems, of serving British interests
to the best of his ability, and if his acts subsequently took an anti-British
turn, it was due rather to the miscarriage of his carefully laid plans than to
any deliberate intention in that direction.
Sowlet-ed-Dowleh, Ilkhani The paramount chief of certain tribes in south west Iran. of the Kashgai, and an old enemy of the
Kawami family, as will be seen from the Shiraz Administration Reports for
previous years, commanded at the beginning of the year the support ot tlie