IOR/R/15/2/653

The file comprises copies of correspondence relating to a financial gift made to the British Government by the Ruler of Bahrain, and a fund set up for the purchase of fighter plans for the Persian Gulf:

• correspondence relating to the receipt and cashing of a gift of £30,000 made by the Ruler of Bahrain, Shaikh Ḥamad bin ‘Īsá Āl Khalīfah, to the British Government towards the costs of the war. In a letter to the Secretary of State for India, dated 23 February 1941 (f 10) the Political Resident (Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Geoffrey Prior) notes that the Italian radio station at Bari has announced that the Shaikh would ‘receive another visit from Italian bombers in return for his gift’;
• correspondence from the Political Resident to the India Office, dated 18 February 1941 (f 8), remitting a sum of £10,000 from the Persian Gulf Fighter Fund towards the purchase of two fighters, which the Resident requests be named Bahrain and Kuwait respectively. The Resident writes that the presentation of the first of the fighters is to be broadcast from Bahrain in Arabic on 20 February 1941, and requests a suitable mention on the BBC’s Arabic broadcast. The Resident also states that though British subjects on the Persian side of the Gulf have contributed ‘considerable sums’, he has not publicised this fact, and suggests that mention only be made of contributions from ‘Arab population British subjects and other communities in [the] Persian Gulf’.