IOR/R/15/1/194

The volume is a diary, created by Residency staff, and recording events taking place at Bushire, in southern Persia, and around the shores of the Gulf, between December 1893 and December 1894. The places from which reports have been received by the Residency include: Bahrain, Bassidore, Bushire, Fao [Al-Fāw], Lingah [Bandar-e Lengeh], Mohammerah [Khorramshahr], Muscat, Sharjah and Shīrāz, this latter place dominating the year’s reports.

The following subjects comprise the contents of the Political Intelligence sections of the diary:

• Meteorological observations, including storms and high winds, and subsequent floods and high river levels. Of particular note is the extensive damage caused by rain and floods in Shīrāz in February and March 1894, resulting in shortages of supplies and rising prices;
• Political affairs, including the movements and actions of royal dignitaries and government officials, tax collection, political intrigues, relations between neighbouring tribes (including raids on villages and caravans, murder, blood feuds, tribute), and civil unrest, in: Persia (with continued reference to the worsening economic situation in Shīrāz); Turkish Arabia (including Katiff [Al-Qaṭīf], Hasa [Al-Hasa] and Katr [Qatar]); and the Arab coast and Muscat;
• Disease, chiefly the instances of outbreaks of cholera, smallpox and fever, with some details of the estimated numbers of fatalities and the duration of outbreaks;
• The movements of travellers and visitors to the Gulf, in particular Europeans (French and Russians) and Americans;
• Issues relating to the Gulf’s telegraph link, including storm damage to the line, administration of the telegraph offices, employees at telegraph offices;
• The movements of British and foreign vessels;
• Agriculture, including harvest yields and locust movements, and the damage inflicted on crops by locusts;

Many of the pages in the diary have been amended, with strikethroughs, deletions and additions in ink, and comments added in pencil or red ink, suggesting that the original entries were checked, commented on, amended, and signed off by senior Residency staff, including the Resident, Colonel Frederick Alexander Wilson (signed as ‘F.W.’), and the Officiating Resident (signed as ‘J.F.W.’; possibly Lieutenant John Frederick Whyte).