Coll 30/9 'Persian Gulf: Administration Reports 1926-1938' [‎456r] (916/1028)

In September, on the 15th the telegraph wire was again cut between the
Tang-i-Turkan and Kamarij, while on the 14th at Ja’farjin on the road
between Kamarij and Kunar Takhteh one brother of the Kalantar of Khisht
district shot his nephew and another brother with 40 armed followers then
looted the village, this leading to fighting between the latter and Amnieh
guards. A large caravan of specie for the Bank had required an escort of
50 soldiers from Bushire, and great nervousness was shown by the military
during its passage to and beyond Shiraz- On the 30th August, Sultan
Abbas Khan Nikbakht, for a year and more Military Governor of the Qash-
qai tribes, was arrested for a treasonable act by orders of the General, and
kept in prison till December, during which period Sartip Nasr-ud-Dauleh
from Tehran made a searching enquiry into allegations of great extortion
and oppression put forward by tribesmen and chiefs against their Governor.
(After the change of General commanding the brigade he was reinstated in
January, but found the clansmen united against him and was unable to
restore Iris authority or even reach Firuzabad. He was recalled to Tehran
in March 1929 and replaced by a Sarhang Qasim Khan, sent specially from
Tehran).
The great event of September was however the concentration by the
30th at Kazarun of some 1,150 infantry, 280 cavalry, 2 field guns and 12
machine-guns with gunners, in order to subjugate Imam Quli Khan, chief
of the Rustam clan of Mamasanni, who had not only been anathema to the
absentee ownei of the Mamasanni tribes, Haji Mu’in-ut-Tujjar of Tehran,
for years, but was held guilty o>f having allowed the Boir Ahmedi brigands
to use his district for their raid on the Bushire-Shiraz road of the 13th July.-
By the middle of October there had been two small engagements, in which
the military lost 5 killed and 12 wounded, their local levies 7 killed and 10
wounded, the Rustam tribesmen 2 only : their chief fired his villages on the
plains and retired to his forts in the hills at Naugak. On the 23rd how
ever the military suffered a heavy reverse as the result of infantry and
machine gunners becoming entangled in a gorge in a rash pursuit of the
tribesmen, who had been joined by the Boir Ahmedi bands and their Khans.
32 ranks were killed or captured, 3 officers killed, 2 made prisoners : 2 offi
cers and 25 ranks wounded and sent to hospital at Fahlian, whither the
force fell back : 2 machine guns were lost and much ammunition abandoned.
The General commanding the brigade then engaged several hundred
Qashqai, whom he armed; but in an attack about November 16th on the
outlying towers of Imam Quli Khan at Naugak the auxiliaries and. soldiers
supporting them again suffered a defeat, 25 soldiers, 40 Qashqai and 37
levies from other Mamasanni elements being reported killed.
This expedition had already proved more costly than the whole of the
Baluchistan operations : and, when the ( Shah reached Kazarun on the 27th
November, he deputed Sartip Murteza Khan and Sartip Muhammad Khan
Shahbakhti (who had arrived with the armoured cars to escort His Majesty)
to examine and report on the situation- Sartip Abul Hasan Khan was
relieved of his command and replaced by the latter of the two first named
generals : and some 400 men of the Rizapur regiment with 6 machine guns
were summoned from Tehran and arrived on the 16th December at Shiraz,
the 28th January in Mamasanni. There at the camp in Fahlian this force
of over 1,700 men remained inactive on the one side of the Zuhreh river (in
flood for part of the time), while endeavours were made to open negotiations
with Imam. Quli Khan in the mountains on the other. The Governor of
Khuzistan, Sartip Farajullah Khan, was brought up to Behbehan during
February to try and obtain by diplomacy from that side the submission of
the Boir Ahmedi chiefs, who are in his jurisdiction, and of Imam Quli
Khan. To save their face, which had been much blackened among the
tribes of southern Fars watching the result of this expedition, the military
and civil officials sedulously spread abroad statements that the Rustam
chief had surrendered the rifles of his tribe, agreed to pay many thousand
Tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. as a fine and give hostages as also similarly the Boir Aimed is.
But the truth is well-known in the surrounding region that by March 13th,