'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎47v] (99/610)

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Dunsterville was able to arrest and remove them. After his
failures at Manj II and Rasht, and British aeroplane raids o\er
the Jangal, Kuchik Khan despairing of assistance from Turks or
Germans perforce became reconciled to the presence of t e
British in Gilan and on 25th August 1918 Colonel Matthews
signed a treaty with him, by which the Jangalls guaranteed
unimpeded use of the Manjll-Enzall road to the British as their
L. of C. from Baghdad to Baku, and were themselves debarred
from sending armed men along it. The Jangalis also undertook
to discharge all enemy officers. In return Colonel Matthews
undertook that representatives of the British forces would
1 abstain from interference in the internal concerns of Persia
so long as Persia did not assist our enemies, or with the political
aims of the Jarigalis with the same proviso, and that the British
would 2 purchase their requirements in rice from the Jangalls.
A mutual exchange of prisoners was agreed upon, and the people
of Rasht were to select a temporary Governor pending resump
tion of Persian Government control.
The prestige of the Ittihad-i-Islamw as severely shaken.
After the re-occupation of Baku by a British force under General
Thomson, which sailed from Enzall on 8th November, they were
deprived of their source of foreign support. Their nominees in
Mahal-i-Salas had withdrawn after the “battle of Manjil bridge ”
and they were consequently no longer in touch with the
Mazandaran chiefs. An attack on Siyahristaq, the Eastern part
of the province, by Akram-ul-Mulk, grandson of Sipah Salar,
the lord of Tunakabun, who also owned large estates in Gilan,
was, however, repulsed and they remained the cle facto power
within the limits of Gilan. They are said to have rejected over
tures to co-operate with 1,000 Turks, who rvent to Khalkhal in
September, and they showed no overt hostility towards the
British, but their negotiations with the Persian Government,
i.e., the Cabinet of Vusuq-ud-Dauleh, which offered very lenient
terms, were protracted throughout the autumn and winter,
until the insincerity and procrastination of the Jangalls became
apparent, and their activity and defiance increased. Their
strength was estimated at about 2,000, they were sending recruit
ing parties to within a few miles of Kazvln, and armed parties
of Jangalls had used the main road near Manjil in contraven
tion of the treaty of August 1918.
1 In August 1918 this clause had no particular significance as the British
troops were only passing through Persia with Baku and the Caucasus as their
objective. Subsequently, however, on the adoption of the policy leading to the
Anglo-Persian convention of August 1919 it became very inconvenient.
8 The contract for rice was most advantageous to the Jangalis as it provided
a good-market for rice which they had confiscated from landowners.