IOR/F/4/2580/153770

This item consists of copies of correspondence, resolutions, and consultations cited in, or enclosed with, an extract of a Political Letter from the Government of Bombay to the East India Company Court of Directors, 20 July 1854. The enclosures are dated 14 April 1853-26 January 1854. It is the sixth in a series of twelve items about the ‘slave trade’ [trade in enslaved people].

The main correspondents are: the Government of Bombay; Captain Arnold Burrowes Kemball, Resident in the Persian Gulf; and Commodore George Robinson, Commanding Persian Gulf Squadron.

The item concerns the seizure, by the Company ship Tigris, of the vessel Sumhere [Shamshīr], accused of carrying one Georgian and two African enslaved people. The enslaved people were accompanied by a man called Sydam [Saʿdān?; also rendered as Saeedan in the item], said to be a servant of Abbas Pacha [‘Abbās Ḥilmī Pāshā I], Wali of Egypt and Sudan, and who was travelling with a passport from Captain Stafford Bettesworth Haines, Political Agent at Aden. The case is discussed, and a decision made to release the Sumhere.

The item includes copies of depositions made by Sydam and Rashed ben Zaed [Rāshid bin Sa‘īd?], the nacoda [nakhuda] of the Sumhere.

The item contains a table of contents (f 745), and the title page (f 744) contains the following references: Draft Number ‘1045/54’, ‘Collection No. 6 of No. 49 of 1854’ and ‘Examiner’s Office’.