IOR/R/15/1/603

The volume’s letters, memoranda and other papers relate to negotiations between the British Government and Saudi Arabia over the extent of the latter’s eastern borders, and the position of these borders in relation to the Arab coast shaikhdoms (under British protection) and Oman. The chief authors of the volume’s contents are Sir Andrew Ryan, British Minister at Jeddah, the Officiating Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Gordon Loch, the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Lieutenant-Colonel Trenchard Fowle, and Bertram Thomas.

The volume is chiefly comprised of reports, both historical and contemporary, compiled to provide context and a basis for negotiation with the Ruler of Saudi Arabia, ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Āl Sa‘ūd (widely known as Ibn Sa‘ūd), and his claims over areas to the east of a ‘Blue Line’ (originally defined in the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1913) dividing the Arabian mainland from the coastal regions, including Qatar and Trucial Oman. The reports detail: Ibn Sa‘ūd’s ancestral claims to Al-Hasa, Qatar and the Oman Sultanate, written by Loch (folios 28-31); the tribal character of the disputed areas (in English and Arabic, folios 33-56), historical relations between the Wahabi [Wahhābī] tribes and the British Government (folios 60-90), including a map indicating the extent of Wahhābī power in 1865 (folio 89); a note on frontiers, written by Fowle (folios 96-99); notes on Ibn Sa‘ūd’s claims, written by Ryan (folios 117-21); notes on Ibn Sa‘ūd’s attitude at the ‘Oqair’ meeting with Sir Percy Cox in November 1922, prepared by the Kuwait Political Agent Harold Dickson (folios 123-29); extracts of a report by Thomas on the ‘Trans-Oman Air Route Reconnaissance of May-June 1927’ (folios 123-44); and records of Foreign Office meetings with the Deputy Saudi Arabian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Fuad Bey Hamza (folios 155-56, 158-59, 160-62, 163, 164).