"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٤‎٦‎٣] (١٧٨٢/١٦١٨)

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" labour. Fortunately for the success of the cause, he was able and willing
" to take in hand all ditliculties of minor detail, as those of sheer political
" character; and while infusing a spirit of earnestness into the local
"executive, and luring a loth Administration to conciliate instead of
" irritate the proud and turbulent Arabs, he did not neglect the smaller
" but very essential facts . . . "
At the end of 1863 some telegraph operatives on the Hillah section
were robbed by a gang of mounted Dhafir Bedouins and Muntafik
inatchlockmen led by a slave of Shaikh Mansur of the Muntafik tribe,
who was then in rebellion against the local Government; but the
Turkish authorities undertook to indemnify the sufferers. In the
beginning of 1864 boats with telegraph materials required at Diwaniyah
were detained at Basrah by the] troubles between the Muntafik and the
Turkish administration"; and the mission by the Pasha of an officer named
Muhammad Bey, who was supposed to have special experience in dealing
with Arabs, seems to have yielded no result. At length, in June of that
year, Shaikh Fahad, the new Shaikh of the Muntafik, sent a relative of
his own to pass the boats up the Euphrates; but whether the passage
was safely effected may, in the light of a despatch written by Colonel
Kemball on the l'3th July, be doubted.
As regards the telegraph, despairing now, after nearly a year's trial of the] ability
of Namik Pasha to 'open the way for its construction, I believe that one of the only
courses left to the Porte to effect this object is either that I should be permitted at
length to act independently and to negotiate directly with the Arabs for a safe conduct,
or that a campaign should be undertaken and vigorously prosecuttd with a sufficient
force to subdue the districts on either banks of the Euphrates from Diwanieh to the
sea. I adhere to the conviction I have uniformly expressed that, with the good will
of the Turkish officials, British Agents dealing directly with the Arabs would experience
no difficulty in carrying out the undertaking. But under Namik Pasha s rule the
proposed policy would be certainly impracticable. The occurrences at Fao on the
occasion of the landing of the cable have served to illustrate the extreme jealousy of
His Excellency at anything like independent action on our part, and *Y our Excellency
is aware that every offer from me to place myself in communication with the revolted
Chiefs personally or by letter, with the view of furthering our telegraphic purposes to
{sic) induce their submission to Turkish authority, has been systematically rejected on
the ground of His Excellency's aversion to every form of foreign intervention ; nor, in
a patriotic point of view, perhaps could His Excellency be blamed for preferring the
second course to which I have referred, but its adoption would occupy time, and would
probably entail a greater sacrifice of revenue and a greater substantive outlay than
the Porte would be willing to incur.
Before concluding this despatch, I beg Your Excellency to pardon me tor alluding
to a matter of a personal nature. Great disappointment is naturally felt in Eng a n
* His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople.