‘Confidential. Persia’ [‎503r] (55/112)

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him an official assurancfl from Your Excellency
that the above was the only reason for the change,
and that Mohammerah and its dependencies,
including all the ports of Arabist an, are still com
prised with the remaining southern custom-houses
in the term “ Ears and the ports of the Persian
Gulf” employed in the loan contracts above men
tioned.”
The Mushir-ed-Dowleh returned an
evasive reply, which was forwarded by Sir
A. Ilnrdinge with the following despatch
to Lord Lansdowne :—
Gulahek,
21st June 1903.
K *
No. 91.
(Confidential.)
“I have the honour to transmit herewith, with
reference to my telegram No. 83 of to-day’s date,
a translation of the reply received by me yester
day from the Persian Government to the note,
a copy of which was enclosed in my despatch No.
80 of the 27th ultimo, respecting the customs of
Ears, Aralistan, and the Gulf.
“ I showed this reply to the Atabeg-i-Azam,
and observed that it did not clearly answer the
question I had been instructed by Your Lordship
to elucidate. The term a Ears and the Gulf of
Ears,” or Persian Gulf” (for the Persian
equivalent of the term Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. is Gulf of
Pars, or “ Khalij-i-Pars”) might be construed
either in its geographical sense, in which case it
would include Mohammerah and the ports of the
province of Arabistan situated on the sea known
to geographers as the‘‘Persian Gulf,” or in its
administrative sense, in which case the customs
of those ports, as being outside the province of
Ears, the district of Hushire, and the customs
division, of which Bushire was the head-quarters,
would be pledged to the service of the Bussian
loans in violation of the promise of 1897. What
Your Lordship wanted to know was in which of
those two senses the expression was understood
by the Persian Government as a party to the two
Russian loan agreements.
“ The Grand Vizier said that the Persian Gov
ernment deprecated a discussion of the subject as
likely to involve them in possible controversies ou
an abstract question both with us and with Russia.
If the latter ever claimed to take possession of the
customs of Mohammerah, wo could then raise it
with her, but what good object could be served
by doing so now ? We had been informed three
years ago that the customs of Ears and of the
Gulf had been excluded from those pledged to the
Russian loan, and had not then pressed for a
definition. 1 reminded His Highness of the re
presentations made by Mr. Spring-Rice in March
1900 —which he professed to have forgotten—and
I observed that, although we had no wish to
place the Persian Government in an embarrassing
position, we could not let the formal separation,
for customs purposes, of Arabistan from the re
mainder of the coast of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. pass
unnoticed, as by doing so we might seem to have
tacitly admitted an interpretation of the expression
" Fars and the Gulf,” which was inconsistent with
our view of the effect of the pledge of 1897. I
would, however, I said, for the present, confine