Page 98 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

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A1UB TRIBES OR THE PERSIAN GULP.

OF THE MUSKAT ARABS, JOASMEES, UTTOOBEES, WAIIA-
BEES, AND OMAN.
In the following paragraphs I have endeavoured to supply the want
tinder which this Government has hitherto laboured of an adequate
knowledge of the complicated interests that prevail in the Persian Gulf,
by affording a sketch of the history of each of the Powers which have
contended for superiority, and of the various revolutions which have
occurred in that quarter from the earliest period.
During the ascendancy of the Portuguese nation, which under
Alphonso d’Albuquerque conquered all. the islands in the Persian
Gulf in a. d. 1507, its navigation was perfectly secure from piracy; it
continued so during the reign of Shah Abbas, or until the rise of the
Muskat Arabs, which may be dated from a. d. 1694-95.
On the death of Shah Abbas, the Arabs, who had from the earliest
ages possessed a superiority at sea over the Persians, established an
influence which they maintained until the year 1736. Their depreda­
tions during that period were carried on to a most alarming degree,
extending to the Indian seas, and the ruler of Muskat became master of
all the islands.
The power of the Muskat Arabs declined in the reign of Nadir
Shah, who re-established the Persian influence; an ascendancy which
Was maintained during the subsequent reign of Kureem Khan, The
tranquillity of the Gulf was, however, disturbed in some degree on the
death of Nadir Shah, by the notorious freebooter Meer Mehana, and by
the Chaub Shaikh, by whose refractory dispositions the trade was
greatly impeded. The British Government was also involved in
serious difficulties by the vacillating policy pursued by its Agents at
Bussora, on that occasion, which reduced our reputation to the lowest
ebb. We experienced a disastrous defeat in an attack of the Chaub,
and failed also in an attempt to reduce Bunderik, belonging to Meer
Mehana. In the course of a badly conducted negociation with Kureem
Khan, for the purpose of retrieving our credit in the chastisement o