"أيام ثيم ولَّت" [و‎‎٧‎٩] (٢٤٨/١٥٧)

80
CHAPTER 13
E n g u1 fed
Bus hire could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered
an improvement on Kohat, nor on any of the previous places to
which I had been sent. The scenery had little to be said for it,
and the climate less. Ships anchored about five miles off-shore[
because there was no depth of water , and passengers and cargo
were ferried in launches and lighters to a tumble-down jetty and
a drab, mud-built port, standing on a flat desert promontary.
About twenty miles inland could be seen the foot-hills of the
mountains which guarded the plateau of Iran.
It was a drive of about five miles over unmetalled roads to the
Political Residency, a large, veranda-ed mansion in which my
chief. Sir Geoffrey Prior, lived, and in one of the many spare
rooms of which I was to be accommodated. It must have been the
most pretentious building in South Persia but stood
incongruously, in the middle of nothing.
To the Persians it was merely the residence of the British
Consul-General, for they recognised no such being as the
Political Resident in the Persian Gulf. In fact, they had right
on their side, and at the end of the war the Political Residency
was translated, rather unwillingly as there was no accommodation
for it, to Bahrain. The set-up originated in the Eighteenth
century but came into its own with the occupation of Bushire by
British forces in a brief war with Persia in the mid-nineteenth
century. Subseguently the weakness of the Qajar Shahs meant that
there was virtually no effective government in South Persiai and
in 1 907 Britain and Russia agreed to divide the country' into
'spheres of influence'. It was considered desirable to balance
Russia's influence in the North with a British Presence in the
South : then, in the First World War, The German Consul in
Bushire, Wassmus, took to the hills and succeeded in creating
such mayhem amongst the Tangistani and Oashgai tribes that the
best part of a division of British Indian forces had to be landed
to keep order, and the South Persia Rifles raised into the
bargain. Bushire was at the centre of all this and, in addition,
was the main trading port in South Persia until Shah Riza opened
the Trans-Irani an Railway in the 1930's. This terminated at
Khorramshahr and virtually all the trade of Bushire transferred
itself there.
By the 1940's the port had virtually died, and the central
government was in firm control of the tribes of South Persia; but
the Political Residency continued there in spite of the lackof a
raison d'etre. vThe P.R. supervised consulates at Khorramshahr,
Bushire, Kirman. Bandar Abbas, of which that at Khorramshahr was
the only one oT any importance, owing to the large numbers of
British and Indian subjects employed at the Abadan o i 1-refinery.
He had a pleasant summer residence at Shiraz 6,000 ft up on the
Persian plateau.