"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الجزء II. ج. ج. لوريمر. ١٩١٥" [‎٢‎٥‎٤‎٤] (١٢٦٢/١٠٦١)

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instituted by or under the advice of the British Government and
those for which the Turkish authorities have been responsible. The
regulations of the Venice Conference of 1897 were adopted imme
diately on their appearance by the Government of India at their
own ports, and in 1897 the pilgrimage to Makkah from India was
forbidden as a special precaution; similarly the measures observed in
Persia, ^Oman and Bahrain, suggested as they were by the British
Government, were governed in the main by the spirit of the Convention
of 1897 ; but the sanitary policy of the Ottoman Government, which
we shall describe first, was conservative and peculiar.
Sanitary regulations and arrangements of Turkey in the
Persian Gulf, 1896-1907.
Rules at
Basrah, 1896
to January
1897.
Proceedings
in connection
with Fao,
Jnnuary
1897.
In October 1896, after the appearance of plague in India, the
sanitary authorities at Constantinople directed 10 days^ quarantine,
reckoned from the date of arrival, to be enforced on Bombay vessels at
Basrah ; the local authorities seem at first to have insisted on a period
of 21 days, but it was never enforced. About the 11th of January 1897
quarantine was imposed at Basrah against Muhammareh as well as
against Bombay ; and an attempt was made to withdraw the faculty of
discharging and loading cargo in quarantine, the export trade of Turkish
^Iraq being thereby immediately brought to a standstill. At the end of
January 1897 the entrance of Shi^ah pilgrims and corpses from India
was absolutely interdicted.
On the 12th of January 1897 it was decided by the Board of Health
at Constantinople that, pending the construction of a lazaret at Fao, all
ships having plague cases on board should be repulsed from Basrah;
but this drastic resolution was rescinded after it had been enforced, in a
single instance only, against a steamer of the Bombay and Persia Steam
Navigation Company. A fortnight later it was announced that the
Porte had decided on establishing a permanent sanitary station at Pao,
—the existing post being in fact merely nominal,—and a Commission
was appointed to select a site; but nothing more was done, and Fao
remained as it had been since 1872 (and still is) a mere sanitary office in
charge of a prepose and two gardes, devoid of a lazaret and of all
sanitary apparatus. The Constantinople Board of Health further
recommended that all ships from India should be examined at the mouth
of the Persian Gulf, but nothing came of this suggestion which was
opposed by the Government of India. Some of these developments
seem to anticipate the results of the Venice Conference of 1897^ which
did not however close until about two months later.
# Fvom 1891 to 1894 the Turkish Government were anxious to transfer the
Basrah quarantine station to Fao ; but their scheme, of which the motives were purely
political, was frustrated by the opposition of the British and Russian delegates
on the Constantinople Board of Health.