"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٤‎١‎٤] (١٧٨٢/١٥٦٩)

Results of
the Oudh
Bequest at
Najaf, 1852.
Local ma
nagement of
the Bequest
1852-54.
Accordingly, in October 1852, the Government of India cancelled
their original orders ; the Oudh Bequest was made payable from the
Baghdad Treasury; and the Political Agent was authorised to exercise
" a judicious supervision over the expenditure of the money
It seems probable that during the whole of this period discussions
regarding the Oudh Bequest were conducted upon the basis of the
misleading English translation of the Agreement of 1825. Various
passages in the correspondence of Colonel Rawlinson and Lieutenant
Kemball indicate this.
In 1852, in a despatch about the Najaf revolt addressed to the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Colonel Rawlinson remarked ;
" Your Lordship will remember that the Indian Government ..... pays a
" sum of £5,000 annually, in virtue of its agreement with the late King of
" Oudh, for the maintenance of the Shrine of Nejjef, and the charities
" connected therewith; and you will understand that this payment has
" drawn a vast concourse of devotees from India to reside in the town.
" Their presence furnishes me with an additional motive for wishing to
" prevent a recurrence of that scene of carnage which took place at the
u sack of Kerbela ten years ago "
The manner in which Major Rawlinson, the Political Agent at
Baghdad, consequent upon the instructions of Government to exercise a
c general supervision over the disbursements of the Lucknow benefactions
to Karbala and ^Najaf, with a view to preventing the misappropriation
u of the funds to political or personal ends/^ proceeded in the local
administration of the Oudh Bequest was described by himself in a letter
to the British Resident at Lucknow, in Mav 1854, as follows :
I entered last year into communication with the Chief Priests of # those places, Mirza
Ali Naki and ^hekh Murtaza, and concerted with them a scheme of distribution which
would, 1 conceived, reconcile the greatest practicable amount of public benefit with a
due regard to the terms of the original bequest, in this scheme, while providing
completely for the individual claims of the Mujtahids and all the various religious
establishments connected with the shrines, I secured at the same time a liberal
allowance for purely charitable purposes, and even for objects of general interest and
utility, such as repairing the mosques and colleges, and keeping open the canal from
the Euphrates upon which Kurbala is dependent for its supply of water. It is only
fail to the Chief Piiests to state that they responded most cordially to every sugges
tion which I offered and sought to secularize the distribution rather than to tie it up
for exclusively religious purposes.
Having obtained from Mirza ; Ali Naqi an exact account of the appli
cation of the Karbala funds under this system during the year 1852-1853,
Major Rawlinson forwarded it to the British Resident at Lucknow with
these remarks.
* Karbala and Najaf.