"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٤‎٣‎١] (١٧٨٢/١٥٨٦)

1431
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him by the partisans of Shaikh Mansur; but he was^ or seemed, unable
to advance. Meanwhile, infuriated by the insolence of Shaikh Mansur
and his family, Namiq Pasha had determined on military operations " m
spite of the difficulties arising 1 out of the marshy character of the country,
the lateness of the season, and his own state of unpreparedness/'
A force of 1,000 regular infantry and 2 guns under Hafiz Pasha, Army
Commandant, left Baghdad on the 2nd May for Kut, where it was to
receive a reinforcement of 500 regular infantry and whence it was to
advance, if practicable, to Suq-ash-Shuyukh, The help of the Bani
Lam and Bani Rabi'ah tribes was invited ; and Shibli Pasha, command
ing at Diwaniyah, was ordered to co-operate with a regiment of cavalry,
400 irregular horse, and 4 guns. It appeared to be the intention of
Namiq Pasha to force the hand of the Porte by making the restoration
of Shaikh Mansur impossible.
By the middle of June 1864 the authority of Shaikh Fahad was suffi
ciently established to admit of the return of the Turkish troops to their
garrisons, except a detachment of 300 men and 1 gun which, at the
Shaikh's request, was left at llas-al-Jazirah, a place on the Shatt-al-
Gharaf not far from Kut. Fahad himself was then in the neighbourhood
of Shatrah, engaged, on his way to Suq-ash-Shuyukh, in receiving the
submission of the smaller tribal authorities and in sub-letting the
revenues of the districts. He had been guilty of gross treachery in
putting to death Sulaiman-al-Khalaif, Shaikh of the Ajwad, one of the
principal divisions of the Muntafik, and in seizing two other Shaikhs,
all of whom had approached him on safe-conduct. Namiq Pasha
" disavowed the act, which he declared to be dimpprovable, though he
" added that, as these Shaikhs had been foremost in resisting the substi-
" tution of Turkish for Arab rule in the Montific Territory, he could not
" regret that they should have been the first to experience the effects of
" the despotism they had themselves mainly contributed to set up."
Before the end of the month, however, it was reported that Shaikh
Mansur had again collected a force, with which he was threatening
Samawah, and that the Bani Malik, a large division of the Muntafik,
had at his instigation renewed their claim to certain lands south of
Basrah from which they had been ejected by Munib Pasha during his
governorship of Basrah. Conspicuous among Skaikh Mansur's supporters
was 'Osman Bey, the son of a former Governor of Musal, who had Hfd
to the Arabs, being a Treasury defaulter, on his removal from the Mudir-
ship of Samawah. To counteract these demonstrations Shibli Pasha wag
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