"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎٣‎٤‎٦] (١٧٨٢/٤٨٩)

346
The " Bagh
dad " Rail
way.
Beginnings
of German
trade in the
Gulf.
paid by the German Emperor, William II, to the Turkish dominions and
capital in 1898 ; and during the period her influence was in the ascendant
in the innermost and most influential Ottoman circles.
A concession for the construction of an Ottoman Railway from Konia
in Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf via Baghdad was definitely secured bv
Germans in 1899 ; and in 1900 a German technical commission, headed by
the German Consul-General at Constantinople, travelled along the propos
ed alignment of the railway in Turkish 'Iraq and reported upon all ques
tions connected therewith. The original idea of the concessionaires was to
bring t he line down to the coast in Kuwait Bay ; but eventually the choice
of a terminus in the Persian Gulf was postponed, as the selection of
Kuwait was opposed by Britain, whose interest was then popularly supposed
to lie in obstructing the whole project until she had been admitted to a large
share in it, and who could not in any case have agreed to the formation of
a railway port in the Gulf except under conditions ensuring its innocuous-
ness to her own military position. A final Convention for the building
of the Konia-Persian Gulf line by a new " Baghdad Railway Company,"
to be formed by the existing Anatolian Railway Company, was signed in
1903 but nothing was done under it in the Persian Gulf region up to the
end of the period with which we are concerned.
Possibly in connection with the Baghdad Railway project, the German
war vessel 11 Arcona/' in returning from the Far East in 1899, was ordered
to visit Basrah. She called at Masqat, Lingeh, and Bushehr, arriving at
the last-named place at the end of March Ij but from there, having learned
that her draught was too great to allow of her crossing the bar of the
Shatt-Al-'Arab, she returned southwards leaving the cruise uncompleted.
German trade in and with the Persian Gulf may be said to have had its
real beginning about this time. In 1899 a party of Germans visited
Bandar 'Abbas to study the commercial situation there. A German named
Toeppen, who became a convert to Muhammadanism, sometimes suspected
of being a political intriguer but really a mercantile adventurer, was in evi
dence at various places in the Gulf from 1899 to 1904). A representative
of a Hamburg firm who had traded in mother-of-pearl shells at Liugeh for
some years established himself in Bahrain in 1901 ; he had also business
relations with Trucial 'Oman, and his dealings with the Trucial Shaikhs
were considered to have some political significance. In 1906 the
(German) Hamburg-America line began a service of steamers between
Europe and the Persian Gulf, and the German merchant already men-
t ioned was appointed their Agent in Bahrain.
In Turkish 'Iraq Germany had secured a practical monopoly for the