File 345/1908 Pt 2 'Mohammerah: situation. Sheikh's dispute with the Vali of Basra. decoration for Sheikh. renewed assurances to Sheikh.' [‎166v] (337/566)

reasons stated in your telegrams Nos. 107, 112, and 116, and the incident has since
been disposed of on other lines.
(ii.) The question as to whether the Proceedings of Vali Suleiman Nazif Bey had
justification or not.
I submit that, in order to arrive at a conclusion 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 beginning of 1910; not necessary, really, to go back further than
the 10th March, 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
vali with the Sheikhs 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 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 Bussorah
telegram of the 9th instant to His Majesty’s Ambassador, to the effect that the breach
between the sheikh and the vali 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 Bussorah 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
vali; that the sheikh had in fact been maintaining a generally conciliatory and
co-operative attitude towards Nazif Bey ever since the latter’s arrival; and that in
pursuit of this policy he had endured with complacency the intermittent destruction of
his house property in Bussorah.
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 Yali of Pusht-
i-Kuh.
This was the general position as between the sheikh and the vali when 1 rejoined
my post from home on the 31st March, and it appeared to me an eminently 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 the vali when Mr. Crow wrote his despatch of the 10th March, all that we
have to do in order to gauge the morality of the vali’s action is to decide whether
subsequent to that date Sheikh Khazal was guilty of conduct which supplied the vali
with justification for such a sudden and complete change of attitude ; for his
discourteous refusal to receive the sheikh when the latter went up to Bussorah to visit
him on the 18th April; for the promulgation of his offensive circular of the 24 th April;
and, finally, for the bombardment of Zain on the 25th. It seems to me that no such
justification has yet been demonstrated.
In a recent telegram from His Majesty’s Secretary of State dated the 31st May,
repeated to me by the Government of India, occurs the following passage :—
The telegram sent by Cox to legation in answer to Mr. Marling’s telegram No. 133
treats the rights and wrongs of the accusations against the sheikh as of no account; but
it is not possible to maintain this attitude.”
I think the telegram referred to must be my No. 543, sent in answ T er to your
No. 123 to me. In it I wrote that my attitude towards the action of the vali 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 I think 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 Bussorah 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 his knowledge the sheikh had
been a thorn in the flesh of the vilayet for the last seven years. It was those
accusations, of the basis of which I had not full knowledge, which I had in mind when
I wrote the said telegram to you, and my line of thought was that, even if they were
proved to be well founded, it could not be said that they had anything to do with the
vali s action in the present instance, which was a separate issue based on incidents
subsequent to the date of Bussorah despatch No. 14 of the 10th March, which, so far