IOR/R/15/1/605

The volume’s letters, telegrams and memoranda relate to ongoing negotiations between the British Government and the Government of Saudi Arabia over the latter’s territorial borders. The chief correspondents in the file are Andrew Ryan, British Minister at Jeddah, George Rendell, Eastern Department of the Foreign Office, Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Gordon Loch, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, and Captain George Cole, Officiating Political Agent in Bahrain.

The major points discussed in the volume are: Saudi Arabia’s eastern borders adjacent to Qatar and Abu Dhabi; Saudi Arabia’s southern borders adjoining Aden; proposals for an extension of the Treaty of Jeddah (1927); private correspondence between Ibn Sa‘ūd and Shaikh ‘Abdullāh bin Jāsim Āl Thānī in relation to oil exploration in Qatar; written records of conversations between British and Saudi diplomats; the locations of wells in the Saudi interior, with details of the tribes that use them, and to whom the tribes pay their taxes. A map (original pencil, ink and blueprint copies at folios 195A, 195B and 202) shows the approximate area occupied by the Al Murrah tribe in Saudi Arabia. Records of the official meetings held in London during June and July 1935 between the Deputy Saudi Arabian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Fuad Bey Hamza, and British officials, are included (folios 117-20, 125-26, 134, 138, 181-83).