IOR/R/15/5/27

This file contains correspondence related to Ibn Sa'ud's [‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd] relationship with the British Government and the Ottoman Empire (and to a lesser extent, Kuwait) including the impact of the First World War. In addition to internal correspondence between British officials on this topic, the file also contains a large amount of correspondence from Ibn Sa'ud himself, in both Arabic and English translation.

The principal correspondents in the file are Captain William Shakespear; Political Residents, Major Percy Zachariah Cox and Major Stuart George Knox; Political Agent in Bahrain, Major Arthur Prescott Trevor; and the Ruler of Kuwait, Shaikh Mubarak al-Sabah. The file also contains of copies of letters sent from various Ottoman officials to Shaikh Mubarak (folios 189-198) and a number of copies of letters sent by Saiyid Talib Pasha [Talib al-Naqib].

In addition to correspondence, the file contains several extracts from the diaries of the Political Agencies in Kuwait and Bahrain related to political developments concerning Ibn Sa'ud and the following documents:

• a 'memorandum setting forth the position as regards Bin Saud for guidance at the time of contemplated meeting with him' by Major Percy Zachariah Cox, 1913 (folios 154-158);
• a memorandum on meeting Ibn Sa'ud by Captain William Shakespear, December 1913 (folios 171-172);
• an account of a trip to Riyadh in 1914 by Captain William Shakespear (folios 219-222);
• a memorandum entitled 'A Contribution to the History of Tribal Fights in the Shamiyah Desert' (folios 426-429);
• an article about Ibn Sa'ud authored by C Stanley G Mylrea and published in The Near East, 11 May 1917;
• a 1917 copy of a treaty agreed between Ibn Sa'ud and the British Government and ratified 18 July 1916 (folios 457-459);
• an account of a visit to Riyadh in the summer of 1917 by P W Harrison (folios 499-502).