Page 102 - The Postal Agencies in Eastern Arabia

remain’... Pray inform Mis Majesty's Government of my sorrow.”
Shaikh Mubarak who had been trying to persuade Ibn Sand to come
into Kuwait to pay his respects to the Viceroy was later to say to Ibn
Saud “I told you so. You would not take my advice, and not only
failed to sec the Viceroy, but you lost a battle and made me lose my
Political Agent.”
Shakespear’s body was found later lying alongside the gun he had
manned, and was buried in the desert where he had died; a Memorial
Stone was later set up in the Political Agency Cemetery in Kuwait.
Although his treaty with Ibn Saud was ratified later in the year, there is
no doubt that his untimely death affected the whole subsequent course
of history in East and Central Arabia - and the Mesopotamian Campaign;
particularly as Shaikh Mubarak also died later in the same year. Lacking
the essential link between Cox and Ibn Saud the British effort was there­
after directed in North Western Arabia by the Arab Bureau in Cairo,
which backed Ibn Saud’s rival Hussein as the leading contender to drive
the Turks out of Arabia. Ibn Saud’s immense potential as an active
participant in Eastern Arabia was lost to the Allied cause.
It was with Hussein’s forces that Lawrence achieved fame. Had
Shakespear not died a lonely death on active service at Jarrab, the
British would have continued to support Ibn Saud rather than Hussein;
and it is likely that we should have remembered the name of
“Shakespear of Arabia”. Fourteen years after the battle of Jarrab, Ibn
Saud, when asked to name the greatest Englishman he had ever met
(and he had, by then, met many), was to answer, without a moment’s
hesitation, “Captain Shakespear.”
Before following the subsequent history of the regular Past
Office in Kuwait, it is perhaps opportune to look back over its eleven
years as an unofficial postal ‘agency’. There are people still living in
Kuwait who remember Shakespear, and who recall that incoming mail
was distributed to addressees at the Political Agency Office and that
outgoing letters could be posted there, but were more usually sent by
hand. Shakespear’s references, already quoted, to Bushire Post Office
make it almost certain that incoming mail would have borne a
“Bushire” backstamp and that its Kuwait destination could only be
recognised by the address; and that stamps on outgoing mail despatched
through the Political Agency would have been cancelled in Bushire and
could only be recognised as being of Kuwaiti origin if the sender's name

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