IOR/F/4/2238/112380

The item consists of copies and extracts of correspondence and minutes cited in, or enclosed with, a Political Letter from the Government of Bombay to the East India Company Court of Directors, 31 January 1848. A copy of this Political Letter can be found at IOR/F/4/2238/112322, alongside details of further enclosures. The item is the fifty-ninth in a series of fifty-nine items on events in the Persian Gulf.

The item relates to the issue of whether vessels from the ‘Persian or Arabian’ Gulfs require passes in order to obtain the privilege of paying single duties on the goods they import to Bombay [Mumbai], as opposed to the double duties charged for ‘foreign bottoms’ [goods carried on foreign vessels]. Henry Young, the Collector of Customs at Bombay, notes that not all vessels from the Gulfs have carried such passes. Young cites several cases where merchants and leaders have petitioned for refunds after being charged double duties. An audit of such a claim is present at folios 630-631.

The item also relates to a pass granted to the bugla, Sad-ool Barree [Sa‘d al-Barī], by the Governor of Judda and Hubusha [a province under the Ottoman Empire with Jeddah as the principal city] and discussions about whether this document needs to be countersigned by a British officer in order to be considered valid.

Correspondents include: Young; Major Samuel Hennell, Resident in the Persian Gulf; Charles Augustus Murray, Her Majesty’s Consul General in Egypt; and the Government of Bombay.

Judda is also rendered as Djeddah in the text.

The title page of the item contains the following references: ‘Bombay Political Department’, ‘Draft No. 345/48, Coll: 2, Vol: 59’, ‘Collection No. 15 of No. 21’ and ‘Examiner’s Office’. The title page also contains a note that relevant correspondence can be found in Enclosures N[umber]s 16 [and?] 19 accompanying despatch from the Government of Bombay, 6 August No. 70 of 1847.