"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎١‎٨‎٧] (١٧٨٢/١٣٤٢)

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sion of loyalty to the Porte and, most of all perhaps, to the difficulty of
expelling- him by force, acquiesced ; and Basrah and its dependencies must,
from this time until about 1669, be regarded as beyond their direct
control, Afrasiyab treated foreigners in his dominions with considera
tion, and trade flourished under his rule; he died apparently about the
end of 1624 or the beginning- of IBSo ; and he was succeeded by his son
Ali Pasha, who <f had intruded into the Government by force before hie
Father expired."
One of the first tasks that devolved on ■'Ali Pasha was the defence of
Basrah against the Persians when they threatened it in March 1625 ;
and the news of his confirmation in the Pashaliq, accompanied by a robe
of honour and a scimitar from the Sultan of Turkey, reached Basrah on
the 13th of May 1625 during the sojourn there of the traveller Pietro
della Valle, At some later period J Ali Pasha caused Qurnah, formerly
an open town, to be fortified.
In 1625 there was much unrest upon the western frontier of ■'Iran, Affairs on
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due to the behaviour of Mutlaq, surnamed Abu Rieh, and [of Nasir-bin- Najaf fron-
Mahanna, two principal Shaikhs of the desert who were at war with one
another; the former was the more powerful, being paramount chief of
some very large tribe# in the north ; but the latter was the nearer to ^Iraq,
and caravans ordinarily travelled from Basrah to Karbala and some distance
beyond it under his protection, for which they paid a high price. At the
taking of Baghdad by the Persians in 1623 Nasir had declared for the
Shah, while Abu Rish continued to support the Turks ; but Nasir soon
broke with the Persians, and in June 1625 he attempted, after impressing
into his service the members of a large caravan on its way from Basrah
to Aleppo, to drive the Persians out of Karbala. The garrison, however,
repelled his attack with loss. In the same month the traveller Pietro
della Valle, while encamped at Qasr-al-Akhaidhir near Shifathah, was
subjected to extortion by Shaikh Abu Talib, the son of Shaikh Nasir,
to whom his father, now old and retired from worldly affairs, had
committed all executive functions in the tribe. A few marches further
on Pietro della Valle entered the territories of Abu Rish, to whom also
he was obliged to pay toll.
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• The actual tribe to which either of these Shaikhs belonged cannot be determined.
It inay have been, in either case, the 'Anizah, the Bani Khalid or the" Northern
Sharamar. Probably both Shaikhs did not belong to the same tribe. From his
geographical position 't seems not unlikely that Mutlaq was head of the 'Aniah.
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