IOR/L/PS/5/447, ff 447-454

This item comprises copies of enclosures to a despatch from the Government of Bombay Secret Department to the Secret Committee, Number 150 of 1846, dated 15 December 1846. One enclosure is dated 2 December 1846 and the other is undated.

The enclosures relate to the apparent ‘mutual understanding’ being formed between the Arab tribes adjacent to Aden, including the following:

• The reports by Captain Stafford Bettesworth Haines, Political Agent, Aden, to the Government of Bombay and the Secret Committee, London, that a peaceable settlement between and with the Arab tribes would remove all ‘obstructions’ between Aden and the interior
• The purported offer of the Sultan of Lahidge [Sulṭān Muḥsin bin Faḍl al-‘Abdalī, Sulṭān of Lahej] to pay a stipend (generated by his stipend from the British) to the Foutheli Sultan [Sulṭān Aḥmad bin ‘Abdullāh al-Faḍlī] in return for the latter not sending supplies to Aden
• The fear by the Abdali inhabitants of Aden that the Fouthelis will mount a retaliatory attack, following the recent Abdali attack on the Foutheli kafilah [caravan carrying supplies]
• A letter to Haines from the Sultan of Lahidge blaming the Sayud Ismail [Sayyid Ismā‘īl] for influencing his hostility towards the British at Aden (f 452)
• Haines’s uncertainty of an agreement materialising until the Sultan of Lahidge comes to Aden, after the Eyed [Eid] festival and reports whether the Foutheli have accepted his offer.

The principal correspondents are Haines and the Government of Bombay.