Page 421 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

UTTOOBEES. 377

The British authority, however, did not cease his exertions and
inquiries, and availed himself of the opportunity
a. d. 1828.
afforded, in a personal interview with the Bahrein
Chief in April 1828, to point out the necessity of his doing everything
in his power to bring the notorious characters before alluded to to
condign punishment.
The Boo Ayen Tribe, residing in Biddah, having in May 1828
displayed symptoms of a refractory spirit on the occasion of their Chief,
Mahomed bin Khamecs, being placed in confinement by the Uttoobee
Shaikh, for stabbing an inhabitant of Bahrein, the latter caused their fort
to be destroyed, and all the inhabitants to be removed to Eowees and
Fowarah, where they were more immediately under his control.
Some time before this arrangement took place, the notorious
characters Sooedan bin Zaal and Syf bin Thykhan, already mentioned as
having fled from Shaikh Tahnoon’s authority, and taken refuge with the
Uttoobee Chief, left Biddah, and returned to their old residence in
Aboothabee.
In the month of September 1828, Obed bin Mohunnah, the chief of
the pirates who committed the outrage on the Bushire Buteel in 1S27,
again put to sea in a large boat, with a number of followers. After
taking out the cargo of two or three small vessels near Bahrein, he
proceeded over to the Persian Coast near Zeerah, where he landed, for
the purpose of making inquiries regarding the destination of a small
Buggalow, then at anchor : but the suspicions of the natives being
excited by a report of his boat being filled with armed men, he was
taken prisoner, after a desperate resistance. The crew of his vessel,
chiefly composed of the Monasir Tribe, finding their chief detained,
made the best of their way over to the neighbourhood of Aboolhabee, on
the Arabian Coast, plundering on their way four Aseeloo boats of all
their pearls and cargoes near Seer Beniyas, for which aggression, how­
ever, full compensation was subsequently afforded by Shaikh Tahnoon.
Obed bin Mohunnah was detained some days in Zeerah, and after­
wards sent to Bushire at the request of the political authority, where a
strict examination having been set on foot, he was satisfactorily
identified as the person who planned and executed the attack upon Bin
Musharee’s Buteel in 1827. A short time afterwards, on an application
being made by Shaikh Abdool Russool for the prisoner lobe given up
to him, to answer for the murder and plunder of his subjects, he was
delivered over to that personage by the Acting Resident, and would
probably have met with the punishment his crime so well merited, had
he not been enabled to effect his escape in the confusion attend­
ing the storm and plunder of Bushire by Prince Timor Mirza in
November 1828.