"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٥‎٢] (١٧٨٢/٢٩٥)

152
history than in practical negotiations, arrived at Constantinople in Mav
1793 and remained there until the following November. A French
Envoy-Extraordinary, in the person of Citizen Descorches, was then
present in the Turkish capital; but, as a nominee of the revolutionaries,
he was not recognised by the Porte; and the French community at
Constantinople were much divided among themselves by political
questions. The greater part of 1794 was spent by MM. Bruguiere
and Olivier on the Turkish islands of the Levant; and from December
1794 till May 1795 they were in Egypt. At the end of August 1795
they left Constantinople, to which they had returned, for Persia j
they were supplied by Citizen Verninae, the successor of M. Descorches,
with the necessary funds and with letters for the Pasha of Baghdad
and the Prime Minister of Persia ; and they were the bearers of a
verbal communication from the Porte to the Government of Persia.
The travellers remained at Aleppo from the middle of November 1796
to the end of February 1796, the delay being partly due to warnings
which they received from their friends that, if they attempted to continue
their journey otherwise than in company with a regular caravan, they
might be destroyed by Bedouin hirelings of the British Consul at
Aleppo; and the case of * M. Borel du Bourg seems to have been
cited to them as an instance in point. MM. Bruguiere and Olivier
reached Baghdad at the beginning of April 1796, stayed there for about
six weeks, and were brought into contact during their visit with
Sulaiman Pasha, whom they were fortunate enough to cure of an
alarming complaint. At Baghdad they had opportunities of con
ferring with their fellow-countrymen Citizens Rousseau and Outrey,
of whom the former was French a Commissioner for Commercial
Relations at Baghdad, while the latter was at once a merchant and
Court physician to the Pasha; and here too they provided themselves
with an interpreter in the shape of a young French clerk, named
Caraman. Phey left Baghdad again on the 18th of May 1796 and
reached Tehran on the 2nd of July ; but Agha Muhammad Khan, the
nilei of Persia, had gone to Khurasan, and they decided to await his
leturn in one of the villages near the capital, prosecuting in the mean
while thcii botanical and zoological researches. Agha Muhammad Khan
airived at Tehran on the 20th of September, and two days later the
French delegates had the first of a series of interviews with Haji Ibrahim,
his Prime Minister, to whom they presented their letter of introduction
the case of M. Borel du Bourg, see the chapter on the history of Kuwait.