"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٣‎٤‎٩] (١٧٨٢/١٥٠٤)

1349
The town of Karbala was in 1842, and had then been for some twenty Rebellion at
years, a self-governing semi-alien republic, exempt, but for the payment s^ttion
( 'f an unceitain tribute,! from the authority of the representatives of of the same,
the Porte. Three-fourths of the inhabitants were Persians or of Persian nLS™?
extraction. The recent history of the place was not to its credit as 1842 -18i3 t
a Turkish town. Two or three Governors appointed by the Pashas
of -Baghdad had been murdered at their post. In 1831, or earlier,
an attempt was made by Dawud Pasha to enforce his authority over
Karbala; but it ended, after an eleven months' siege of the town, in
a mere promise by the inhabitants to pay annual revenue. 'AH Eiza Pasha,
the immediate successor of Dawud Pasha, was denied entrance into Kar
bala, even as a pilgiim; and, after obtaining a money payment and the
acceptance as titular governor of his nominee Saiyid Wahhab, a Karbalai
of good family, he seems to have acquiesced in its virtual independence.
In the interior of the town an extraordinary state of affairs prevailed.
The government was really in the hands of some two or three thousand
tYaiamaz oi good-for-nothings 3> as they were called, recruited from
among the criminals and broken men of all Turkish 'Iraq and Persia, who
subsisted upon the other inhabitants and upon pilgrims. The Yaramaz,
who always went armed, followed different self-constituted chiefs ; much
the most powerful of these in 1843 was Saiyid Ibrahim, Za'fram,
a Perso-Arab; and next to him were Mirza Salih and Muhammad
All Khan, whose partisans were mostly Persians. Among the Yaramaz
themselves quarrels and bloodshed were rife ; the respectable public lived
in terror of them j and no resident or pilgrim was safe from violence until
he had placed himself under the protection of one of their factions,
— a protection which, needless to say, was not extended to him gratui
tously. Colonel Taylor, the British Political Agent at Baghdad, de
scribed the situation as follows':—
The poR'er of government was in tlie hands of a constantly renewed! band of
malefactors, ruined outlaws and dishonest runaways from|every corner and tribe of the
Pachalic; even the Turkish .soldiers and lower employes flying from the fear of
merited punishment, debtors from their creditors, public delinquents from the just
severity of the law, were all welcomed, protected, employed in arms, and denied to all
the reclamations of the Turks.
* This massacre is remembered at Karbala by Persians as the " Gharati " or " Plunder-
ln 5 by Arab8 a3 the "^aggah " or « Stroke." The Muhammadan year was 1258, and the
phrase " Ghadir Dam " ( pool of blood), of which the letters yield that numerical value,
is also used to denote it.
tYarama^ ia a Turkish word meaning " it is worthless." Though a verbal form it is
used a-so as an adjective meaning « evil" (man), " naughty " (child), etc.