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File 1855/1904 Pt 10 'Koweit:- Relations with Turkey. Sheikh's properties at Fao and Fadaghia' [‎165v] (330/398)

The record is made up of 199 folios. It was created in 12 Jan 1908-18 Sep 1912. It was written in English and French. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .

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2
marily to consult His Majesty’s Consul and to obtain material for full report.
Before doing so he wrote twice again on 23rd and 24th June. On the first date
he submitted an ad interim report, in reply to the Secretary of State’s tele
gram, dated 12th June, in which the Sheikh’s case was again stated and his
request for a joint Committee of enquiry repeated.
His letter of 24th June enclosed a further communication from Sheikh
Mubarak to me in reply to my letter to him of 7th_ June in which the Sheikh
clubbed the question of quarantine arrangements with that of his Fao properties,
and, after detailing his grievances in the latter case and repeating his request for a
Commission of enquiry, proceeded to discuss the quarantine question in terms
clearly intended to signify that unless we co-operated in the Fao matter he would
not do so in regard to quarantine.
On 17th July Major Knox reported the details of his visit to Basrah
which may be allowed to speak for themselves. On 20th July after paying a
passing visit to Fao on his return journey, Major Knox again reported.
The informal nature of this visit did not of course admit of his making any
exhaustive enquiry into the rights of the case, but such information as he
was able to pick up sent him away with impressions unmistakably unfavourable
to Sheikh Mubarak’s claims.
5. It will have been noticed that there are two separate claims at present
under dispute, one with the Turkish Military authorities regarding that portion
of the property contiguous to the periscope of the Fao Fort and involving the
right of riparian reclamation : the other concerning the ownership of a piece of
valuable ground at the northern extremity of the Sheikh’s estate.
In regard to the former question Major Knox sympathises with the attitude
of the Turkish military authorities and considers that they had good reason for
destroying the Sheikh’s dam.
Of the second claim he writes : “ It is quite a question whether Sheikh
Mubarak has or has not committed a serious aggression, involving valuable
property to the north of his estates. In this matter we have no possible
jurisdiction or pretext for interference and the matter appears one entirely for the
Turkish Courts to settle.”
It is quite possible that Major Knox’s present estimate of the case is the
correct one, but it seems to me that these claims can hardly be treated by us
from an entirely detached point of view, and I doubt the expediency of our wash
ing our hands of the matter on the strength of the impressions now formed by
him. In fact he himself suggests at the close of his last communication that
the execution of a careful survey and record of rights is probably the only
means of laying the matter to rest. It is not clear however what agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. he would
expect to carry out these measures.
To any one perusing the whole record it must be evident that both in
regard to statements of fact and expressions of view it bristles with contradictions.
In any case it is beyond dispute that the Sheikh is extremely sore in regard
to the treatment he has received in the matter of his Fao properties and it is
equally beyond question that in the past he has suffered much oppression both
in connection with the protracted ircarceration of his Agent Abdul Aziz bin
Salim, and the murder of his head watchman 4 years ago.
Again we have his own and the Political Agent’s word for it that the matter
touches the Sheikh much more closely than any of the current questions of owner
ship affecting other localities in his reputed territory, such as Bubiyan, Um Kasr
or Warba. It is further clear that our failure to give him the active assistance
which he looks for in the present difficulty is prejudicing his attitude towards us
in other important connections, the quarantine and the house-rent questions.
That we have no jurisdiction in the matter goes without saying ; nor dees
the Sheikh ask us to exercise any ; what he has consistently pressed for is a
Committee of enquiry by the finding of which he agrees to abide.
In spite therefore of the adverse conception of Sheikh Mubarak’s case to
which Major Knox’s visit to Fao has brought him, I venture to express the hope

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The papers concern relations between Shaikh Mubarak [Mubārak bin Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ], Ruler of Koweit [Kuwait] and the Government of Turkey [the Ottoman Empire]; particularly in regard to the purchase by the Shaikh of date gardens at Fao [Al Fāw] on the Shatt-al-Arab, and property at Fadaghia, near Fao, both of which were in Turkish territory. In both cases, the Turkish authorities insisted that the Shaikh should first register himself as an Ottoman subject before they would allow the legal formalities of ownership to be completed.

The principal correspondents are the Political Resident A senior ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul General) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Residency. in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. (Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Zachariah Cox); the Political Agent A mid-ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Agency. , Kuwait (Major Stuart George Knox; from 1909 Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear); the British Consul at Basrah (also referred to as Bussorah) [Basra] (Francis Edward Crow); the British Ambassador at Constantinople (Sir Gerald Augustus Lowther); Shaikh Mubarak; and senior officials of the India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. , the Government of India, and the Foreign Office.

The papers cover: papers concerning the Fao property, including the Shaikh's appeals for a committee of inquiry and arbitration over the matter, January 1908 - July 1909 (folios 115-199); papers concerning the Fadaghia property, February 1909 - December 1910 (folios 6-114); Foreign Office paper containing a memorandum communicated to the Turkish Ambassador concerning the Bagdad railway question and other matters, July 1911 (folios 4-5); and correspondence concerning a false report in a Turkish newspaper that an allowance had been granted by the Turkish Government to Shaikh Mubarak, May-July 1912 (folios 2-3).

The French language content of the papers is confined to three folios of newspaper extracts (folios 133-135).

The date range gives the covering dates of all the documents contained in the papers; the covering dates of the Secret Department minute papers that enclose them, as given on folio 1, are 1908-1912.

Extent and format
199 folios
Written in
English and French in Latin script
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File 1855/1904 Pt 10 'Koweit:- Relations with Turkey. Sheikh's properties at Fao and Fadaghia' [‎165v] (330/398), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/L/PS/10/51/2, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100037401202.0x00008c> [accessed 29 March 2024]

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