"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٣‎٥‎١] (١٧٨٢/١٥٠٦)

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defending the town. Guns were mounted on the walls, and armed Arabs
were brought in from the surrounding country.
Seeing that the rebels were not inclined to submit and that they were
only utilising the delay to strengthen their position, Najib Pasha obtained
reinforcements from Baghdad and ordered the Army Commandant to
advance to Karbala with one regiment of cavalry, twenty guns, and three
regiments of infantry. SaMullah Pasha, with these troops and some
friendly Arabs, arrived before the place on the 19th December 1842. He
pitched his camp on the south-east side of the town outside the date
plantations by which it is surrounded, and was fired on from these, but did
not reply. The Mujtahid Saiyid Kazim and the Zill-us-Sultan then
visited the Commandant in his camp and proposed that the families of the
Yaramaz chiefs Saiyid Ibrahim and Mirza Salih should be delivered up
to him as hostages ; that the Commandant should then withdraw to
Musaiyib with the bulk of his force, leaving 500 men behind outside
Karbala; that this small force, on the arrival of the main body at Musa
iyib, should be admitted into Karbala, while the Yaramaz with their
dependents were allowed to quit the town unmolested; and that, when the
evacuation by the Yaramaz was complete, the troops at Musaiyib should
be at liberty to return to Karbala. SaMullah Pasha seems to have accepted
these conditions and to have sent to Najib Pasha at Musaiyib informing
him of what had been done, whereupon the people of Karbala ventured
forth from the town and the imported Arabs proceeded to amuse themselves
outside the walls in their usual fashion, with Hosah dances and firing of
guns. On the next day it would seem, being the 21st or 22nd of December,
the Zill-us-Sultan went to the Turkish camp with the family of Saiyid
Ibrahim, Za^frani, and with Mirza Salih in person. The party were well
received by the Turkish Commandant; but presently Sulaiman Mirza,
another Persian refugee prince, arrived from Musaiyib with the news that
Najib Pasha refused to sanction the retirement of any part of the Turkish
force from before Karbala. Next morning the Commandant found that
Mirza Salih had escaped to the town, that others of the required hostages
were wanting, and that some of those delivered up to him were not the
persons that they had been represented to be. He accordingly sent
Ibrahim Agha, an artillery officer, to Karbala to find out what was going
on there. Crowds of townsmen and Arabs poured out of the date
gardens as this emissary passed, asking him for news, and followed him
to the town gate. While he was still at the gate an alarm was raised by
watchers on the town wall, and it was said that the Turkish troops
were advancing. In reality the Commandant was only improving the
dispositions of his camp j but the rebeiH rushed out in large number