IOR/L/PS/5/464, ff 70-78

This part of the volume consists of copies of enclosures to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 33 of 1850, dated 25 June 1850. The enclosures, numbered 3-5 and dated 28 July 1849 to 10 May 1850, relate to the affairs of the Baghdad Pashalik [also spelled Bagdad Pachalic in this item]. Enclosure No. 3 consists of two letters from the Acting Consul at Baghdad and Acting Political Agent in Turkish Arabia [Ottoman Iraq], Lieutenant Arnold Burrowes Kemball, to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Arthur Malet, forwarding under a flying seal a despatch to the address of the Secretary to the Government of India in the Foreign Department, forwarding copies of despatches addressed by Kemball to HM Ambassador at Constantinople [Istanbul], Sir Stratford Canning.

The despatches concern:

• Maashook Pasha [Ma‘shūq Pāshā, also spelled Mooshook Pasha in this item], the newly appointed Governor of Bussorah [Basra], leaving Baghdad for the seat of his government. The boundaries of his jurisdiction being declared to be identical with those which defined Bussorah when it existed formerly as a separate and independent Pashalic, and the executive government of Bussorah being placed in financial and military subordination to Baghdad, but with the new Governor being empowered to correspond directly with Constantinople
• Kemball stating that in the course of the two or three interviews he had with Maashook Pasha during his stay Baghdad, the latter displayed ‘the least possible knowledge’ of the commercial and productive resources, the character, and the population of the district he is going to rule
• Kemball writing to Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Hennell, the Resident at Bushire [Bushehr], to advise him of the appointment of Mooshook Pasha, and warn him to be on his guard against any ‘intrigues’ for the extension of Turkish influence along the shores of the Persian Gulf
• The river in Baghdad [the Tigris] having risen to an unusual height, causing the land beyond the city walls to become flooded in every direction, stopping the passage of caravans, destroying property, and leading to the spread of a fever which threatens to decimate the population
• The arrival at Sulimanieh [As Sulaymaniyah] of Namik Pasha [Muḥammad Amīn Nāmiq Pāshā] following the repulsion of an attack upon the town by Kurdish rebels with considerable loss to the Kurds, his reported declaration of a general amnesty and release of the majority of prisoners, and Kemball’s view that such leniency is calculated to conciliate the Kurds, restore confidence, and hasten the submission of the Kurdish levies, and that Turkish authorities seem to consider the ‘troubles’ in the Kurdish mountains to now be at an end.

Enclosure Nos. 4-5 consist of related correspondence: from the Secret Committee to the Governor in Council of Bombay, forwarding a copy of a letter from HM Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Palmerston, to the President of the Board of Control; and from Malet to the Political Agent in Turkish Arabia, Major Henry Creswicke Rawlinson.