IOR/L/PS/9/71/56

Translation of a letter from the East India Company Envoy to Persia [Iran], Lieutenant-Colonel John Macdonald Kinneir, in Tabriz, to the Prime Minister of Persia, the Assuf ed-Dowleh [Allāh Yār Khān Qājār Davallū, Āṣaf al-Dawlah]. Macdonald Kinneir indicates that he has learned of a plan to send Mirza Abdul Hoosain Khan [Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Ḥusayn Khān Shīrāzī] to London to announce the intended mission of the Persian Minister for Foreign Affairs [Mīrzā Abū al-Ḥasan Khān Shīrāzī] to the British Government (see IOR/L/PS/9/71/51-53). He reminds the Assuf ed-Dowleh that the former HM Chargé d’Affaires to Persia, Henry Willock, and the former Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Colonel Ephraim Gerrish Stannus, have conveyed letters from the Persian Government to the British Government. Indicating that Willock is due to arrive in Persia within forty days, Macdonald Kinneir recommends that the plan to send an envoy be delayed until the receipt of answers to either of the above communications, and that should it subsequently be decided to send an envoy, a ‘person of higher qualifications’ than Mirza Abdul Hoosain Khan should be chosen.

This document was originally enclosed, numbered 5 in dispatch No. 65, in Macdonald Kinneir’s letter to the Secret Committee of the East India Company of 22 September 1827 (IOR/L/PS/9/71/50).