IOR/L/PS/5/449, ff 468-482

This item comprises a copy of an enclosure to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 23 of 1847, dated 2 March 1847. The enclosure is dated 11 January 1847.

The item comprises a despatch from Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Political Agent, Turkish Arabia [Ottoman Iraq], forwarding, for the information of the Government of Bombay and the Governor-General of India, the following:

• Copies of Rawlinson’s correspondence with Viscount Palmerston, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, regarding the alleged distribution by ‘Russian Agents’ in and around the district of Sulimanieh [Sulaymaniyah] in Koordistan [Kurdistan] of anti-British printed handbills detailing the ‘military forces and the magnificence of the Russian Empire’. Included is a copy of a private letter sent to an official of the Foreign Office by Keith Edward Abbott, the British Consul in Tehran: detailing the claims suggesting that Russia aims to increase its influence in Koordistan, Turkey and Persia [Iran] as a possible means to invading India, and denigrating Russian approval of the Shah’s current heir-apparent whose ‘intellect is said to be of the very lowest’ (f 475). Rawlinson concludes from his investigations that the claims are exaggerated and misconceived, but supports the idea of a pamphlet contrasting the Russian and British empires, for Turkey and Persia as well as the ‘Koords’ [Kurds]
• A copy of Rawlinson’s letter to Colonel Justin Sheil, HM Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Tehran, relating to the suggested removal of the Turkish guard ship at Mohamrah [Khorramshah, formerly Mohammerah] from its anchorage in the Shat-el-Arab [Shatt al-Arab River] below the mouth of the Haffar (canal), to a position above the mouth of the Haffar, specifically Nejib Pasha’s [Muḥammad Najīb Pāshā, Governor of Baghdad] decision not to press for the alteration following the protest of the Governor and merchants of Bussorah [Basra] (concurred with by Joannes Parseigh, the British Agent at Bussorah), that it would encourage even further the ‘alarming’ increase in ‘piracy’ in the lower Euphrates and damage both the trade of that city and Mohamrah.

Two other enclosures listed in the abstract, comprising the Bombay Times summary of Intelligence and Bombay Overland Telegraph and Courier, are noted as ‘Missing 30.10.1906’.