"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٣‎٦‎٥] (١٧٨٢/١٥٢٠)

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1365
and was able to arrest and imprison Wadi Bey^ Najib Pasha's favourite
Shaikh and revenue farmer; but his officers were treated with contempt
by Fahad, the Shaikh of the Muntafik, who had lately succeeded
to the headship of that tribe on the death of his brother Bandar. The
Pasha next established himself at Diwaniyah with 3,000' men and
began to re-organise the tribal arrangements and to recover arrears of taxes;
but presently the Hindiyah dam gave way again, and with it disaj)peared
such remnants of prestige as lie still possessed. These events occurred
during the winter of 1849-50.
Early in 1850 > the regular forces of the province having mostly been
sent against a rebel Kurdish chief, the Shammar north of Baghdad were
called in by 'Abdi Pasha to supply their place. This tribe were not
infrequently made use of by the Turkish authorities to chastise smaller
Arab tribes, a task which they were accustomed to perform with hearty
good-will, but without much discrimination between the friends and the
foes of the Government. On the present occasion the Sham mar seem to
have raided the banks of the Tigris so energetically that the country down
to Kut-al-Amarah was turned into a desert, road and river became equally
unsafe, and trade was interrupted. Safuk, * Shaikh of the Shammar, pro
minent in the events of 1833, had been treacherously murdered by an
agent of Najib Pasha, as already mentioned, and the chief of the tribe in
1850 was his son Farhan.t
In 1850, Shaikh Fahad having somehow disappeared, the headship of
the Muntafik tribe was disputed between Faris-bin-'Ajil and his cousin
Mansur-bin-Rashid, with dire results to trade and the country at large.
The Turks officially recognised Mausur as chief j but hardly had they
done so when his rival attacked him, driving him out and obliging him
to seek refuge in the Ka ; ab country. The Turkish authorities then
accepted Faris.
In 1852, the Baghdad Pashaliq, after nine years of continuous mis- Goverumbnt
government, was reduced almost to a wilderness. A new ruler had arrived of Namiq
Fasna, 1852<
in the person of Kamiq Pasha J ; but his headstrong violence and his
* Safuk was in friendly relations with the British Politioal Agency j and in 1841
tie recovered at the request of Dr. Ross, the Agency Surgeouj some articles of which
the traveller Mr. (afterwards Sir A. H.) Layard had been robbed on a journey.
f On Farhan, by 1855, the Turks had conferred a monthly subsidy ; but it Was not
large enough, as that Shaikh himself once remarked, to meet his expenditure on coffee
for guests, and he always treated it as of no account.
| This may have been the NSmiq Pasha who was deputed from Constantinople in
1843 to report on the Karbala massacre. There is reason to think that that once
promising official became in his later days a thorough-going reactionary.
Muntafik
troubles,
1850.
,1