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muul, and at tlio same time lie denied that any recent application for
a concession had been received by the Porte; but, notwithstanding this
disclaimer, it was ascertained that one Montran Effendi Itashid
had lately offered £T 100,000, on behalf of an Anglo-Syrian or Anglo-
Egyptian syndicate, for a concession of the pearl fisheries in the Red
Sea and on the eastern coast of Arabia from Kuwait to Qatif, as well
as a royalty of £1 4*U,000 per annum; that it had been ruled by the
Turkish Financial Commissioner that the pearl fisheries were a matter
within the province of the Public Debt Administration; and that the
grant of the proposed concession had been held to be impossible on
account of the opposition of the Arab Shaikhs, of disturbances in Ilasa,
and of various other political obstacles. About the same time the
Wali of Basrah was pressed by the Turkish Government to recover the
full pearling dues payable in Qatar and Bahrain; but he reported that
the attitude of the Shaikhs made this impracticable, and that in any
case two revenue cutters, which he had not at his disposal, would be
required for the work.
In Juty 1900 Rat-ansi Parshotam, a British Indian merchant settled Trucial
at Masqat, after obtaining leave from the Shaikh of Abu Dhabi Shaikhs
and making arrangements with the Bani Yas tribe, sent two Indian 'vnrncd
drivers with diving apparatus to the pearl banks; but the venture coifcosaions
failed, in consequence, it was Eaid, of the inexperience of the divers 1900.
in pearling operations, and of the boat being taken by the Arab
guides to an unsuitable place. The Government of India thought that
the affair, if no notice were taken of it, might form an embarrassing
precedent; and Colonel Kemball, Political Resident at Bushehr, accord­
ingly gave it to be known that permission for such undertakings
should not be granted in future by the Trucial Shaikhs, and that
British subjects seeking to obtain permission should be referred to the
Resident. Enquiries by Colonel Kemball from the Shaikhs of Trucial
'’Oman and Bahrain showed, that the banks were regarded as the
common property of the coast Arabs, that no Shaikh had the right to
grant permission for diving to foreigners, and that the appearance of
divers equipped with European diving dresses would probably not be
regarded with equanimity by the local operatives. Accordingly in March
1902, when Tek Cband Dwarka, a British Indian subject in Bahrain,
stated that he had been offered a concession by the Shaikh of Abu Dhabi
for pearl fishing by means of diving apparatus and enquired whether he
could be guaranteed against molestation in case of his taking it up, he was
informed by the Acsistant Political Agent in Bahrain that it was not
legally in the power of the Shaikh to grant any concession of the 6ort.
The next symptom of outside interest in the pearl fisheries was the Belgian rcu
visit of the “Selika", a small Belgian steam yacht, to the Persian Gulf in ture, 1901.
the spring of 1901. The “Selika", after leaving Masqat, disappeared
till the 11th of April, or about a month later, when she made her appear­
ance at Bahrain ; but those on board admitted that most of the interim
had been spent in the neighbourhood of the pearl banks, and it was after­
wards ascertained that on their return to Europe they had disposed of a
quantity of small pearls.
It is noteworthy that in the same year it was announced, in the Briliali con
«Daily Express" of the 9th of May 1901, that an influential German mumcation