Page 80 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 1,2

r POLITICS 30

, l|)Un- on the Gulf Coast. But the Sheikh or Sultan of Kowcit
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' -Viiro-s and to some extent attains to a wider territorial control.
' more than a petty town sheikhdom the Sultanate of Koweit is
, uito modern. The actual ruler, indeed, is only the second either to be
'.^morally styled Sultan or to claim a wider area of jurisdiction than
rho'iminediate neighbourhood of the fort (Kilt) and townlet, which
an ancestor, driven by the Turks out of his small holding at Umm
Qa.-r on the Khor ‘Abdullah, built on the south side of theGrane Inlet
t.arly in the eighteenth century. Growth has been fostered by the
itu-renstfd trade of the* Gulf, since piracy was suppressed and the
pearl-fishing industry encouraged, and by the interest taken in
t lie place by all concerned in the question of the Baghdad Railway’s
outlet on the sea. Nominally Koweit was, untfl less than twenty
years ago, included in the Ottoman province of Basra, the Sheikh
a a ile. facto ruler being accepted by the Porte as governor de jure ;
and in 1871, when Midhat‘Pasha occupied Hasa, the then Sheikh
subscribed to this interpretation of his status. But the British
Government of India, which had never accepted it, insisted on
dealing with him directly when the Baghdad Railway question
began to .loom on the horizon, and has since supported his house
against the*Turks, with whom the late Sultan formally repudiated 0
all relations in 1914. In 1S99 the latter signed an agreement with
us of a similar nature to that entered into by the Sultan of Oman,
and four years later he accepted a British Political Agent at his
court. In return we paid him a subsidy. He subsequently regarded
himself as under British protection, and made important exclusive
concessions to us.
His son, the present Sultan, claims territorial jurisdiction over the
coast from Safwan (near the head of the Khor Zobeir, of which
the Khor ‘Abdullah is a lower continuation) a little north of parallel
30° N., to the Bay of Musallamlyah, north of parallel 27° N.—a stretch
of Jtbout 200 miles ; and over the inner country, which is entirely -
°f_ steppe-desert character, from the head of the Inlet up to the
Batirg the lower course'of Wadi Rummah. But these boundaries are
: disputed north by the Muntefiq tribe (formerly by thfe Turks of
Basra) ; south by Ibn Sa‘ucl and the Beni Khalid ; west by Ibn
Rashid. Effectively he rules from about Umm Qasr on the Khor
Abdullah to Ras ez-Zor, and inland to about a day’s distance. His
territory includes the large island of Bubiyan.
The Sultan maintains a small permanent force distributed in
posts on the coast round, and for a short distance north and south
ot; the Met. He has residences in Koweit itself and at Jahrah.
nis family has a considerable interest in the pearl fishery and Gulf

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