"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٢‎٨‎٦] (١٧٨٢/١٤٤١)

First
Turkish
expedition,
1798.
Sack of
Karbala by
the
wahhabis
and second
Turkish
expedition,
1&01—1802.
Attitude of
the Arab
tribes to the
Wahhabis
and apathy of
the Turkish
authorities,
1802.
on the history of Najd : in this place it will be enough to refer to some
of its principal incidents.
Before 1798 various attacks had been made by the Wahhabis upou
Turkish territory ; and in that year, even the town of Hillah having
begun to suffer from their depredations, a Turkish expedition marched
from Basrah, of which the objective was Dara'iyah, the Wahhabi capital
and the purpose nothing less than the reduction of Najd. This force^
which was under the command of 'Ali, Sulaiman Pasha's second Kehiyah.
the murderer and successor of Ahmad Pasha, turned back from Hasa after
a short and inglorious campaign ; and th^ result of the expedition was
merely a truce for six years, arranged at Thaj during the Turkish retire
ment on Basrah and subsequently ratified a L . Baghdad.
This truce, even, was not long observed ; and on the -ZOth April 1801,
a terrible disaster befell the Turks in the sudden seizure and complete sack
by the V\ ahhabis of the town of Karbala, a place regarded as sacred by
Shi'ahs and therefore by almost the whole Persian nation. Sulaiman
1 asha endeavoured to reply to the outrage by an expedition against
Dara'iyah, conducted this time not by a Turkish official but by Thuwaini.
the chief Shaikh of the Muntafik tribe ; but the result of this second
attempt was even less favourable than that of the firs", for not far beyond
Kuwait the commander was assassinated, whether through political
treachery or in consequence of some private grudge, and the leaderless
force was dispersed and partly destroyed by the Wahhabis. These
were the events that unnerved old Sulaiman Pasha, who in middle
age had defended Basrah bravely for a full year against thg whole force of
Persia, and who now, on learning of the calamity at Karbala, was said to
have exclaimed : It is not fit I should live longer."
1 lie attitude of a number of the Arab tribes of 'Iraq vas, in May
1802, extremely doubtful with reference to the Wahhabis. It was con-
sideied not improbable that the Khaza'il and the Shammar Toqah, who
had both suffeied much at the hands of the Turks, migat join the
Wahhabis, if the latter should attempt an invasion in force ; the loyalty
of even the Muntafik tribe had become open to question ; and the Pasha
himself had enunciated it as a principle, that ff enfin il ne faut pas
compter sur les tribues arabes, qui ont toutes les yeux sui les
« Vehabes." The very extremeness of the danger begot a kind of apathy,
which caused the town of Hillah, though unmistakeably threatened by
the "W ahhabis, to be left unwalled and undefended ; and Mr. Harford
Jones, the British Resident at Baghdad, was constrained to remark in
addressing the Governor-General of India : u I fear Your Excellency