IOR/R/15/5/32

This file contains correspondence related to the British Government's relationship with Ibn Sa'ud [‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd]. Specifically, the correspondence concerns hostilities between the forces of Ibn Sa'ud and the Ikhwan during the rebellion led by Faisal al-Duwaish [Faysal al-Duwaysh], the possibility of Ikhwan members entering Kuwaiti territory with their followers and tensions between Ibn Sa'ud and Kuwait.

Much of the correspondence in the file is between British officials at the Political Agency in Kuwait, the Political Residency in Bushire, the High Commission in Iraq and the British Agency in Jeddah, but the file also contains copies of letters, in Arabic with English translations, from Ibn Sa'ud and the Ruler of Kuwait, Shaikh Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah.

In addition to correspondence, the file contains the following:

• an English translation of a speech given by Ibn Sa'ud that was published in the Meccan newspaper Umm al-Qura in July 1929 (folios 96-99).
• an account of a visit made to Kuwait by al-Duwaish in August 1929 written by the Political Agent in Kuwait, Major Harold Richard Patrick Dickson (folios 121-125);
• details of how Ibn Sa'ud established Wahhabi dominance at the Masjid al-Haram Mosque in Mecca (folios 140-142);
• a breakdown of the structure and tactics of Ibn Sa'ud's military forces (folios 151-153);
• an account of an interview between Dickson and Hilal al-Mutairi in Kuwait in September 1929 in which al-Mutairi claimed that King Faisal [Faysal] of Iraq was plotting with members of the Al Shammar tribe to support the Ikhwan rebellion against Ibn Sa'ud (folios 251-257).