File 345/1908 Pt 2 'Mohammerah: situation. Sheikh's dispute with the Vali of Basra. decoration for Sheikh. renewed assurances to Sheikh.' [‎117v] (239/566)

the recall of the Wall. These recommendations, however, you felt unable to
endorse, for the reasons stated in your telegrams Nos. 107, 112 and 116, and the
incident has since been disposed of on other lines.
(fV) The question as to whether the proceedings of Wali Suleiman Nazif
Bey had justification or not % —l submit that, in order to arrive at a conclu
sion on this point, it is not necessary or logical to look back further than the
time of Nazif Bey’s assumption of his appointment, at the end of 1909 or begin
ning of 1910 ; not necessary, really, to go back further than March 10th, 1910,
the date of Mr. Crow’s Despatch No. 14 to His Majesty’s Embassy. In the
earlier part of this document we are told of the cordial foregathering of the
Wali with the Shiekhs of Koweit and Mohammerah at the house of Abdul
Wahab Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. -el-Kurtass and of the banquet, speeches and photographs which
followed ; and, while it may be quite true that the host, when delivering his post
prandial pleasantries on this occasion, was speaking with his tongue in his cheek
as Mr. Crow suggests—just as I fear he was when he expressed the valued
opinion quoted in Basrah telegram of 9th instant to His Majesty’s Ambassador
to the effect that the breach between the Sheikh and the Wali was healed—yet
the contents of the last two paragraphs of the despatch are open to no such
imputation of insincerity. In them we have an explicit statement from His
Majesty’s Consul at Basrah to the effect that there had been no disturbance of
importance on the river during the preceding winter; that Sheikh Khazal had
-'quite recently been exercising his good offices in the endeavour to promote a
reconciliation between an important riverain Turkish Arab Chief and the Wali;
that the Sheikh had, in fact, been maintaining a generally conciliatory and co
operative attitude towards IN azif Bey ever since the latter’s arrival; and that,
in pursuit of this policy, he had endured with complacency the intermitent des
truction of the house property in Basrah.
I may mention too, apart from the above, that I was made aware, by the
reports of His Majesty’s Consul at Mohammerah, that the Sheikh had also been
endeavouring to promote friendly relations between Nazif Bey and the Wali of
Pusht-i-Kuh.
This was the general position as between the Sheikh and the Wali when
I rejoined my post from home on 31st March, and it appeared to me an eminent*
ly satisfactory one. It was the same when I visited Mohammerah a week later.
It seems to me, therefore, that, having regard to the happy terms which admittedly
existed between the Sheikh and Wall when Mr. Crow wrote his despatch of
of 10th March, all that we have to do, in order to gauge the morality of the
Wall’s action, is to decide whether, subsequent to that date Sheikh Khazal was
guilty of conduct which supplied the Wali with justification for such a sudden
and complete change of attitude ; for his discourteous refusal to receive the
Sheikh when the later went up to Basrah to visit him on 18th April • for the pro
mulgation of his offensive circular of April 24th, and, finally, for the bombard
ment of Zain on 25th. It seems to me that no such justification has yet been
demonstrated. J
In a recent telegram from His Majesty’s Secretary of State, dated 31st
May, repeated to me by the Government of India, occurs the following pas
sage :— & r
The telegram sent by Cox to Legation in answer to Mr. Marling’s tele-
fu an cu -fb treats the rights and wrongs of the accusations against
attitude 1 ’* 33 ° n ° aCC0Unt ’ but ls not P ossible to maintain this
I think the telegram referred to must be my No. 543 sent in answer to
your No. 123 to me. In it wrote that my attitude towards the action of the
ah would be the same if the accusations against the Sheikh were well founded.
If read by itself the sentence does convey the meaning above attributed to it,
but trunk the full context indicates that it was not quite that attitude which I
sought to take up My ? telegram to you was a reply to Basrah telegrams
repeated by His Majesty s Embassy to London and to you, in which Mr. Crow
had stated that Turkish grievances against the Sheikh were of long standing
and serious, and that, to Ins knowJedge, the Sheikh had been a thorn in the
flesh of the Vilayet for the last 7 years. It was those accusations, of the basis