"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٠‎٢‎٦] (١٧٨٢/١١٨١)

1026
ing" policy towards Turkeys and, acting'in concert with tlu 1 ^saqit) of
Basrah, he succeeded in procuring the removal of Hamdi Fas ha, the \\ ali
of the day, an honest but unpopular official, and the appointment in
his place in autumn 1899 of Muhsin Pasha, a military officer, who was
prepared to represent Kuwait affairs to the Porte in a new light.
One of the chief dangers which Shaikh Mubarak had at this time
to avoid was arrest while making an official visit to Basrah in
person,—a mark of submission on which the Turkish Government
strongly insisted. Muhsin Pasha played his part well; and not
only were no further encroachments on the Shaikh's independence
attempted by the Turks for more than a year and a half, but, as
we shall presently see, Mubarak safely paid the required visit to
Turkish territory, received a Turkish official decoration from the
Sultan, and was enabled to harass with impunity the Turkish vassal Ibn-
Rashid of Najd, and even to invade and temporarily occupy a part of hie
principality.
Visit of a Before these occurrences, however, a German Commission visited
Kailway Com- Kuwait in search of a suitable terminus for the projected Baghdad Eail-
miision to way: it was headed by Herr Stemrich, the German Consul-General at
Kuwait,
January Constantinople ; and, but for the Agreement of 1899, concluded chiefly m
view of a similar Russian project, and a warning conveyed to the Shaikh
by the Commander of H.MS. "Melpomene" that he should make
no arrangement with the Commission without the approval of the Gov
ernment of India, the incident might have had results prejudicial to the
position of Great Britain in the Persian Gulf. From Mubarak's
account of his interview with the Commission, which took place at
Kuwait on the 19th of January 1900, corroborated as it was by a subse
quent report of the Commission itself, it seems that the Shaikh expressed
himself unfavourably as regards the establishment of a railway terminus
within his jurisdiction, and that he made it clear to the members of
the Commission that the real control of the country rested with
himself and not with the Sultan of Turkey. The Commission apparently
tried to open negotiations with him for the sale of Kadhamah at the
head of K uwait bay and for the lease of the lands surrounding
Kawaikib and Ghadhai,—a scheme involving the acquisition in
all of a plot of about 20 square miles; but their intentions were
frustrated by Mubarak's strict observance of his obligations to the
British Government, in which he was probably fortified by a doubt of
the good faith of the Commission, and by a suspicion that their proposals
might be a skilfully disguised movement on the part of the Turks. At