'Journal of a Journey from Persia to India through Herat and Candahar. Also Report of a Journey to the Wahebee Capital of Riyadh in Central Arabia' [‎78v] (156/268)

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the Bedouins, and of consolidating his dominions under one
peaceful and prosperous, though thoroughly despotic and fanatical
rule. Abdullah, the eldest son of this Ameer, served his father
efficiently as a military leader. The comparatively rich Provinces
of El-Ahsa and Kateef were annexed; thus once more rendering
the confederacy a sea-board power. Their shore line was
extended by the utter subjugation of the powerful maritime tribe
Ben Khauled, whose haunts lay between Kateef and the head of
the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. . To the westward, the hill tribes of Kathan on
the road to Mecca, were held in check. The Turkish Government
was propitiated through its Shareef of Mecca by a nominal tri
bute. While to the northward, relations of mutual forbearance
were entered into with the tribes of Jubbul Shummer and Dafeer.
Even in India the Wahabees began to be spoken of as a powerful
body of fanatics. They were newspapered into an exaggerated
notion of their own importance; and possessing, as they do,
agents at numerous distant points, and many detached bodies
of co-religionists along the Coasts of Persia and Arabia,
and in Hindoostan they considered the juncture come when
they could aggress with impunity, and put in train measures
for re-establishing their direct dominion over the territories
of Muscat, and the chieftainships of the pirate Coasts: thus
attempting to realize, what, at a subsequent interview, the Ameer
Fysul explained to me, as being the consolidation of the kingdom
which God had given him, extending from Kowait to Rasul Hud,
and even beyond.
11. When I arrived as Resident in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , now 3£
years ago. I found that among my
tV/e my Report No- 30 of 0 ^} 1Gr duties were those of Arbitrator
2nd February 1803. „ m i _ . _
of a Maritime Iruce entered into by
the series of quasi-independent Chieftains among the Arab littoral.
And on inquiring further into the matter I ascertained that these
Chieftains were in fact more or less the puppets of the great inland
Power of Najd, which, pressing along the inland frontier of the
Chieftains, received from them tribute, or otherwise dominated