File 6499/1920 Pt 1 'KOWEIT AFFAIRS: KOWEIT-NEJD BOUNDARY DISPUTE; LOCAL UNPOPULARITY OF SHEIKH' [‎139r] (271/294)

of the name of Sutaihiyah, hut take it to he Subaihiyah,
which is 3b miles from Kuwait. This tallies more or less
with the opinion of ’Abdullah an-ilafisi, Ihn Sa'ud’s agent
here, who says that Ihn Sa’ud claims that his sway extends
as far north as did his grandfather’s, and this would bring
the Kuwait frontier to within 20 miles of the town, as in
Col. Lewis Felly’s report on his journey from Kuwait to
Riyadh in 1865 Malah is mentioned as being the frontier post
2. Shaikh Salim claims as his southern frontier the line
defined in Article 7 of the Anglo-Turkish Agreement of 29th
July 1913, and it is very largely on this Agreement that he
bases his claim. This line it will be remembered runs from
Hafar in the Batin, through Safah, Q,ara’, Haba War bah and
»
Anta’ to the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. at Jabal Manifah, and its distance
from Kuwait town as the crow flies varies from 160 to 135 (
miles.
3. It appears that this boundary was fixed very largely on
information obtained by Captain Shakespear in his tours and
embodied in a Kate (Ho. C-62, dated the 12th August 1912).
He points out that it is as definite and definable as any
line which one can expect to find in a desert; owing to the
scarcity of wells to the south it is a strong one-j and all
the points were unquestionably within the jurisdiction of
Shaikh Mubarak. He sums up most aptly by saying:« "All
Arab shaikhs base the territorial extent of their power
upon their ability to enforce some order over the adjacent
tribes, their power to enforce the payment of ”zika.t ky
Beduin, and their capacity to prevent and to avenge outrages
and raids within the territorial limits claimed. Judged
by these standards there can be no question that Mubarak is
the paramount chief within the limits described. He levies
’’zikat" from the ’’Awazim, who are practically a Kuwait tribe,
the whole of the Umtair, except two or three distant sec
tions in Kajd, most of the Ajman, the Bani Khalid and, until
lately,-also from the Dhafir.”
4
The political situation fo&XK now, however, is very