ملف ١٩٢٤/١٧٠٧ "الجزيره العربية - تقارير عن الوضع في جدة. (١٩٢٤-١٩٣٠)" [و‎‎٢‎١‎٩] (٨٩٨/٤٤٢)

EASTERN (Arabia) .
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CONFIDENTIAL.
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[E 1488/644/91]
I 1 807
192 7
No. 1
[March 28, 1927. J
Section 1.
/t
Acting Consul Mayers to Sir Austen Chamberlain.—{Received March 28.)
(No. 23. Secret.)
Sir 7
i tt A vtt ^ • i . Jsddcih, March 8, 1927.
xr • ^ DAVE the honour to transmit herewith m y report on tho cntimtirm in iRo,
Hejaz during the period the 1st to the 28th February, 19 P 27. 1 th
x^ n 2 'x report are being sent to Egypt Jerusalem ‘RflarErl AH^n
Delhi, Beirut (for Damascus), Khartum (through Port Sudan) and Siifga S pore’.
I have, &c.
NORMAN MAYERS.
Enclosure in No. 1.
Jeddah Report for the period February 1 to February 28, 1927.
THE King has remained in Nej d during the whole of February. His Maiesty’s
absence has slowed down affairs in the Hejaz, and has certainly increased the
difficulty of transacting affairs with the Hejaz-Nejd Government. Riyadh has no
doubt been accessible by means of wireless communications and speedy couriers to
e queries, problems and news submitted to Ibn Saud by his own subordinates in
t ^ PaS ^ een T u ite another matter for the foreign representatives in
Jeddah, who have had to find a substitute for the helpful personal contact maintained
between them and the King when the latter is in the Hejaz.
2. Simultaneously with Ibn Baud’s departure for Nejd in January,
Dr. Abdullah Damluji, Director of Foreign Affairs, obtained from his master leave
to spend two months with his family in Hofuf, where, as he describes in his recently
published book, Major Cheeseman met him in obscurer days in 1923. On
Dr. Abdullah Damluji’s departure, Sheikh Yussef Yassin took over duties as Acting
Director, and it has been with him that practically all ordinary business affecting
general British interests has been transacted during the interval.
3. Sheikh Yussef Yassin is a young man of intelligence, but of discursive and
argumentative mentality, who formerly sought his fortune with the Arab Government
in Damascus, he being by birth a Syrian and by persuasion a Nationalist. He came
subsequently to the Hejaz, and when, after the fall of Mecca in 1924, Ibn Saud
founded his newspaper the “ Umm-el-Kura,” Sheikh Yussef was made its editor.
He is not to be blamed for his peregrinations, in that his inclinations and aspirations
are obviously pan-Arab. On the other hand, the narrow cast of his views and his
extraordinary methods, so different from the frank directness of his master, have
doubled the difficulty of relations. A suspicion or an abstract idea will dart across
the current of his thought in the transaction of most ordinary and straightforward
business and divert the course of talk completely. When the King is present
Sheikh Yussef sits before him meekly, like the mere scribe he is. But with the
direction of affairs in the Hejaz left in his hands by the King’s absence he has proved
a very lago. The Emir Eeisal, the King’s nominal representative, has been
completely effaced. Often, the only effective means of checking Sheikh Yussef’s
genius for obstructive thought has been a hint that his master, when he returns, may
not altogether be too pleased at his petty management .
4. His methods are unpleasant. He is, for example, engaged at present in a
battle with the local agents of the Khedivial Mail Line for quarantine dues on a
batch of Egyptian pilgrims who arrived in the Hejaz on last year’s pilgrimage. The
Egyptian Government, in accordance with their own regulations, received these dues
in advance before ever the pilgrims left their own country, and are therefore debtor
in this respect to the Hejaz Government. One would have thought that this was a
simple matter, easily arranged between the two Governments concerned. Not so
Sheikh Yussef Yassin; his method is to press the Khedivial Mail Line agents in
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