Coll 30/23 'Persian Gulf. Koweit: Status. Position vis a vis Iraq and Ibn Saud. Boundaries of Koweit' [‎303r] (606/695)

5
Kuwait, supply a limited but hioreatdng quantity
of vegetables and melons. The chief agricultural
Centre in the principality is Jahrah, where wheat,
barley and lucern are grown, as veil as vegetables,
a"d where there are some 2 500 date palms,
agriculture of J hrah might be considerably
r creased if m re money were sunk in it. The
next most important agricultural centre is the
inland of Failakah, where wheat and barley are
grown with some success on the clayey patches,
also vegetables, and particularly carrots, which
are of quite exceptionally fine qu'di y
The Sea Fisheries. —Oi Kuwait are its only
truly local p oduee ; thes-e are a valuable asset,
besides fioat-ami-u eight nets and lines, traps
ma le of ree i hurdles are also used the Hsh enter
them at the flowing tide and are left behind at
the ebb. The majority of the fish caught is con
sumed locally hut a sm 11 ) roportion is dried and
exported to Fasrah and elsewhere. The fisher
men of Kuwait are mostly Arabs of the ‘ Awazim
tribe, but there are also other Arabs and a few
Persians. The boats used are practically all
the excepti"iis being jalibauts. A few
of the prirnative hu* airiyah*, or boats made of
date branch’s are still used.
Pearl Fishing is the most important trade
•T Kuwait. The town possesses over seven
hundred pearl boats, but many of these have not
been at sea fer years, as owing to the increased
demand for 1 hour elsewhere, it is impossible to
find crews for them. The average number of
boats from Kuwait which now visit the banks is
not more than about 330, and this year it was
ve'y much smaller. The Kuwait Pearling Fleet
consists of tw<» p irts : the small boats which fish
off the Neutral Zone, Sudah and Huzum ; while the
large boats go farther afield. The 1927 season
Wos better than has been for three or four y ar,
and the pearl market, which las been bad for
some time is also better.
Trade .—Kuwait owes its mercantile importance
to its p’ avling and carrying fleets, and to its
trade with India, and with ’Iraq and Persia —
especially a lucrative smuggling trade. Also in
normal years with the Interior of Arabia, par
ticularly Qosim, for which it is the natural port.
Since the beginning of 1922, however, this trade
has been closed by Ibn Su’ud, who has prohibited
his subj cts from trading with Kuwait at all.
His reison for this action is that he says he is
unable he collect his Customs dues on goods im-
portel from Kuwait in the dese t, and that he
wants to establish a Najd Customs House in
Kuwait Town, an arrangement which the
Shaikh of Kuwait has naturally never seen his
way to accept. Other suggestions have been
made to get over the difficulty : for example that
import duty into Najd should be abolished, and
that the Shaikh of Kuwait should levy export
duty instead and pay Ibn Sa’ud a fixed sum, but
up to the present it has not been possible to come
to any agreement. This stoppage of trade
between Najd and Kuwait is a most serious
matter for Kuwait—as also for Qasim and
Hail—and the prosperity of the town has been
declining ever since. The people of Kuwait are
nearly all of Najd origin, and net a few of the
Kuwait merchants had partners in Buraidah and
Unaizah, and even n >w the affairs of Najd interest
them much more than those of ’Iraq.
Ibn Sa’ucl .—The great Wahhabi Ruler Faisal
bin Turki as-Sa’ud who died in 1865 left his
throne to his eldest son, ’Abdullah. The latter’s
brother Sa’ud, however, rebelled against him and
occupied Riyadh. ’Abdullah fled to Hail, and
invoked the assistance of Ibn Rashid, who was
then the most powerful man in Arabia. Sa’ud was
defeated and killed, but ’Adullah soon realized
that he had gained little, as Ibn Rashid annexed
the Wahhabi country, and ’Abdullah was kept a
prisoner in Hail until he died.
Meanwhile the remnants of the Sa’ud, who
would not submit to a foreign yoke had gone into
exile, some to the Hijaz, and others, including
Faisal’s fourth son ’Abdur Rahman, to Kuwait!
Encouraged and helped by Shaik Mubarak, another
bitier enemy of Ibn Rashid, Abdur Rahman
underfook the task of freeing his land from the
foreigner. An attempt in 1900, failed, but in the
spring of l9iil ’Abdul Aziz bin ’Abdur Rahman
al-Fsisal as-Sa’ud, the present “ Ibn Sa’ud ”, acting
for his father, left Kuwait with a picked follow
ing of tw<> hundred m< n. When he armed near
Riyadh, he halted his party and went on at dusk
with fifietn men alone They m de their way
unnoticed to the house of Ibn Rashid’s governor,
into which they forced an entry and placed
evt ry-one in it under arrest in ore room.
They learned that the governor, as always
had gone to the fort to pass the night
for greater security. They accordingly waited
in the house till he r* turned in the moring sur
rounded by this badyguard. As the cortege
approached the dcor, the sixteen rushed out
sword in hand, and, after a brief struggle ’Abdul
’Aziz bund himself master of Riyadh. The
following years were spent in recovering pro
vince after province from the dominion of the
foreigner.
In the spring of 1913’Abdul ’Aziz, in whose
favour his father had abdicated, swooped upon
Hasa and turned the Turks out of the province
lock, stock and barrel. Such was the state of affairs
at the outbreak of the War—which affected Arabia
bss then most parts of the world. When Shaikh
Mubarak of Kuwait renounced fealty to the
Turk he really changed nothing. When Ibn
Rashid marched against Ibn Sa’ud at the close
of 191-t, although nominally he did so on behalf
of the Turks, it was really only another hand in
the old match betw r een the rival principalities of
Riyadh and Hail. The rival forces met at
Majma’ah, 120 miles north-west or Riyadh, and
fought an indecisive battle, in which Captain
Shakespeare who was with Ibn Sa’ud was killed.
It was not till the beginning of November 19^1,
however, that the long struggle w^as finallv
brought to a close by the final surrender of Hail
to Ibn Sa’ud. This brought not only the Jabal
Shammar, but Jauf and all the surrounding
country to the borders of Syna, under his sway.
Ibn Sa’ud’s next campaign against the Hijaz
started in the summer of 1924, the result of a
quarrel which had long been simmering By the
end of 1925 he had captured the Hijaz and
expelled the Hashimite dynasty. Thus in twenty-
five years did this extraordinary man raise himself
from an exile in Kuwait to be King of the Hijaz
and of Najd and its Dependencies.
Ibn Sa’ud is now a man of about fifty years
of age. He is at least 6 feet 3 in. in height,
and of very dign fied and handsome appearance.
He possesses an extraordinary charm of