Page 420 - PERSIAN 5 1905_1911

10 ADMINISTRATION REPORT OF THE PERSIAN GOLF
Consulate-General, Major Trevor taking over charge from Monsieur Cbaloin
on his departure. A successor had not been appointed when the year closed
Monsieur Chaloin had so far been a satisfactory colleague in that he took no
interest or part in Bushire or Gulf politics; depended mainly on the friendly
offices of the Residency for his information, and his co-operation could be
relied upon when needed. He did not, however, give satisfaction to his own
Government.
The honorary duties of this Consulate remained in the hands of the
Messrs. Wonckhaus’s Agent throughout the year. The grounds for the Nor­
wegian Consulate at Bushire are not apparent, and the post is a complete
sinecure.
Turkish interests at Bushire have, for many years, been in the hands of
a local Persian gentleman by name Mulla Husein. Towards the end of the
year, however, the Porte decided to send a Consul de carriere to Bushire in
the person of Nebil Zia Bey, who is apparently expected to remain some time,
and has brought his family from Turkey. He has not been in the East
before and seems discontented with his lot.
Doctor Abel Combier arrived at the beginning of 1909 to replace Dr.
Bussiere. He is an officer in the Military Colonial Medical Service, and has
maintained cordial relations with the Residency since his arrival.
The year 1909 will be long remembered for the Nationalist upheaval
which supervened throughout Persia,
Local Politics.
and finally terminated in the deposition
or abdication of His Majesty Muhammad Ali Shah, in July 1909, and the
re-inception of an administration on Constitutional lines, with a boy of ten
summers as a figure-head Shah, under the guidance of a Regent chosen by the
representatives of the people.
Before narrating the part played by Fars and Bushire in these events,
it is. necessary to explain briefly the general situation which prevailed in
Persia at the beginning of the year.
The conflict between the forces of liberalism and re-action had been
seething for months in Northern Persia; the Nationalists had now got the
upper hand in Tabriz, there had been an abortive rising at Meshed; and
Muhammad Ali Shah must surely have come to realise that all serious hope of
being able to stem the tide of popular feeling, and to effect reversion to despo­
tic government was past. He still, however, maintained an attitude of
dogged obstinacy, and, apparently hoping that the position might ultimately
be saved by Russian intervention, continued to burk, by every sort of subter­
fuge, the promised electoral order necessary for the formation of a new
Medjliss. Yet, except at Tabriz, the exasperation of the people had not been
expressed by any overt act of revolutionary hostility. Early in January,
however, disturbances broke out in Ispahan; Yezd and Resht followed suit
early in February, and then Fars and the Gulf ports took up the cue.
The peasant population of Fars, as a whole, is essentially bucolic and
uncivilized. There is no “ nationalist spirit ” properly so-called, abroad
among the peasantry at large, but the Nationalist propaganda, preached as
it was with a strong admixture of religious exhortation, naturally appeals to
the more truculent element of the country-side, so long at any rate, as the
main feature of the creed continues to be the non-payment of the taxes and
the chance of enrichment by brigandage in some form or spoliation of govern­
ment Customs. So it was in this case.
The movement in the south was started by a fanatical Mulla of Lar,
named Seyyid Abdul Husein. In 1907, when affairs in Shiraz were giving
trouble to the Government, this firebrand proceeded to the head-quarters of
the province and endeavoured to upset authority there. On the arrival of
the Zil-es-Sultan however he made himself scarce but continued to roam
about the Darab and Fasa districts with a force of tufangchis, preying upon
the properties of his enemies in Shiraz, such’ as the sons of the Kawam, ana
keeping the country in a general state of unrest and lawlessness.