IOR/L/PS/5/449, ff 298-305

This item comprises a copy of an enclosure to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 16 of 1847, dated 12 February 1847. The enclosure is dated 11 December 1846.

The enclosure comprises two copies of the same despatch from Major Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Political Agent in Turkish Arabia [Ottoman Iraq], forwarding, for the information of the Government of Bombay and the Governor-General of India, copies of his communications to Henry Wellesley, HM Minister Plenipotentiary at Constantinople [Istanbul], reporting on affairs in the Bagdad Pachalic [Baghdad Pashalik].

The papers cover Rawlinson’s concerns that the recent death of Moollah Abdooll Azzeez [Mullā ‘Abd al-‘Azīz], the Persian [Iranian] Consul in Baghdad (also referred to as the ‘Persian Agent’), will engender a number of problems in the Pashalic. He refers to the following:

• The number of pilgrims in the city without a ‘national protector’
• The increased mutual depredations of the Turco-Persian frontier tribes
• The inability and unwillingness of the unpaid deputy of the late Agent to ‘deal with political questions of any magnitude’ including representing Persia at a conference proposed (on the orders of Tehran) by the Governor of Kermanshah on the frontier to settle the differences between tribes preparatory to the settlement provided for in the Treaty (of Erzurum)
• Rawlinson’s lack of authority from the Foreign Office to represent Persian interests, but intention to mediate between Nejib Pasha [Muḥammad Najīb Pāshā, Governor of Baghdad] and the Persian authorities to promote good relations.