Captain Shakespear: Desert exploration, Arabian intrigue and the rise of Ibn Sa'ud

By Alan Dillon

Two years before T E Lawrence received orders to travel to the Hejaz to liaise with the leader of the Arab Revolt, other British officers had already roamed the Arabian Peninsula's unforgiving Nejdi desert, to rally tribal support for the British war effort. The first was Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, a political agent from the Government of India's Political Department. Born in October 1878 in India, Shakespear spent much of his childhood away from his Anglo-Indian parents, schooling in Portsmouth and later in the Isle of Man, before entering Sandhurst as a British Indian Army Officer Cadet. On his return to India, Shakespear spent six years in military service before he joined the Political Department in 1904, serving twice in Bandar Abbas and briefly in Muscat. Shakespear's next mission was as a political agent in Kuwait, arriving at the coastal Sheikhdom in the spring of 1909. For the next four years, he travelled extensively into the Nejdi desert, providing both London and Delhi with valuable intelligence about the vastly unknown interior as well as cultivating a personal relationship with Ibn Sa'ud, the Emir of Riyadh. At a time when London and Constantinople were negotiating the Anglo-Ottoman treaty, Shakespear almost became persona non grata for advocating the need to back the emir after his tribal warriors had expelled the Ottoman garrisons in al-Hasa in 1913. When war was declared in July 1914, Shakespear was one of the first to try to join the British Army to fight in France, but when the Ottoman Empire looked set to ally with Germany, the powers that had previously shunned him now needed his unique knowledge of Central Arabia and relationship with Ibn Sa'ud. That October, as many of his peers and countrymen crossed the English Channel to reinforce those already in the trenches, Shakespear set sail for Kuwait on special duty to rendezvous with the emir. It was a mission that T E Lawrence would later commend, acknowledging the crucial role that the political agent played during the early stages the Middle Eastern theatre of war. Shakespear was a pioneer in exploring the Nejd, capturing many firsts with his camera, although there were a few other equally intrepid British officials who preceded him into the desert. From the late-18th century, the East India Company collided numerous times with the House of Sa'ud as both attempted to understand the intentions of the other, before the political agent finally laid the foundations for formal diplomatic relations with Ibn Sa'ud, and later with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Medina Publishing
• Release date: Dec 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781911487456

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Captain Shakespear

Desert exploration, Arabian intrigue

and the rise of Ibn Sa‘ud

Captain Shakespear

Desert exploration, Arabian intrigue

and the rise of Ibn Sa‘ud

Alan Dillon

Copyright © Alan Dillon 2019

ISBN: 978-1-911487-45-6

Produced and published in 2019

by

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Edited by Eleo Carson

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Maps by Martin Lubikowski, ML Design

The moral right of the author has been asserted according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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CONTENTS

List of illustrations

List of maps

Maps

Author’s note and acknwoledgements

Foreword

Preface

1The Treaty of Darin

2Family history, youth and apprenticeship

3Fed on the bread of adversity

4In the service of the Viceroy

5Feuding for the Nejd

6The explorer and the emir

7Al-Hasa

8Turkish intrigue

9An understanding of the Nejd

10 The path less travelled

11 The struggle for primacy

12 One last hurrah

13 Over the horizon, the Great War

14 On special duty

15 Jihad

16 Backing the right horse

17 Jirab

18 Kindly put that question down

19 Ad mortem

Endnotes

Bibliography

Photo credits

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INSERT ONE

1. Lieutenant Shakespear in 17th Bengal Cavalry frockcoat.

2. Wari Bunder hospital in Bombay.

3. After arriving at the political agency in Bandar Abbas Shakespear drafted his first report to Major Percy Cox.

4. The new political agency in Bandar Abbas.

5. A sketch map produced by Shakespear to support his argument for routing a new telegraph cable via the new consulate building.

6. ‘Baggage and mutton on the march’.

7. Shakespear’s expeditionary working space including his desk.

8. Dhabia, Shakespear’s favourite riding camel ( dhulul ) with full saddle.

9. The ‘ridiculous white’ baby camel that was born during Shakespear’s Jan– Mar 1910 expedition.

10. The first photograph of Ibn Sa‘ud, taken by Shakespear in 1910 on the veranda of the political agency in Kuwait.

11. Ibn Sa‘ud outside Shakespear’s tent in Thaj, 1911.

12. Ibn Sa‘ud and his mounted warriors on the charge near Habl, 1911.

13. Badu taking on water at the al-Hannah wells near Thaj, 1911.

14. A small ‘Ajman party passing through Thaj.

INSERT TWO

15. Lt Col Sir Percy Cox, Shakespear’s mentor throughout his time in the Political Department.

16. Shakespear coming ashore in Bahrain in late 1914 at the beginning of his special duty.

17. The political agency in Kuwait in 1909.

18. A view of Kuwait harbour from the Political Agency.

19. The first photograph of the ruins of Dir’iyya. Taken by Lt Leachman, Shakespear’s rival.

20. Black Badu tents, which were ideally approached in full view of the occupants.

21. Riyadh, looking west from the East Gate.

22. The well at al-Shamsiyyah where Shakespear (and Pelly) camped on the outskirts of Riyadh.

23. Sa‘ad (centre) on a buttress of Ibn Sa‘ud’s palace in 1914.

24. Riyadh’s main square, where Ibn Sa‘ud attempted to allocate camels to riders ahead of a raid.

25. The interior of the isolated oasis of Jawf.

26. A primitive aqueduct at Malham, channelling water across a wadi bed to the date groves.

27. Natives from Riyadh loitering outside the city’s defensive walls near al-Shamsiyyah

28. The local security detachment at the Kontilla outpost.

INSERT THREE

29. Old Majma‘a town.

30. A well in Majma‘a’s visitors’ garden.

31. Shakespear’s field diary entry for Monday 2 March 1914, describing his meeting with al-Askar, a brief description of his host’s khawah and a sketch of the room.

32. One of the alcoves in al-Askar’s khawah described by Shakespear.

33. The north-eastern side of Riyadh’s defensive walls, 1914.

34. Wadi al Rummah, north-east of Aqaba, where Shakespear’s caravan was guided by Al ‘Auda’s men.

35. Jirab, looking south.

36. The slight dead ground in Jirab where Shakespear and the baggage caravan were sheltered from view and rifle fire.

37. Ibn Sa‘ud’s letter of 4 February 1915 to Cox in which he informed him that ‘our cordial friend ... Captain Shakespear’ had died.

38. Shakespear’s memorial at the Kuwait Christian cemetery.

LIST OF MAPS

Shakespear’s routes 1909–1911

Shakespear’s routes 1912–1913

Shakespear’s route 1914

AUTHOR’S NOTE

STYLISTIC CONVENTIONS

For Arabic names and terms, I have applied the transliteration system recommended by the International Journal of Middle East Studies, with slight modification. The diacritics have not been used but ‘ayn and hamza have persevered. I have used ibn for ‘son of’ rather than bin (although both are correct) except when quoted directly, and I have kept the widely used English spelling for some of the more familiar places, such as the Nejd, Riyadh and Hodeida. Original spellings have been maintained in the references and direct quotations, and wherever I have not been able to find the correct transliteration. I have left Indian, Persian and Ottoman terms as they were spelt by Shakespear and his peers or in official documents produced by, and for, the Foreign and India offices.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sadly, Dr al-‘Askar died in a road accident in Alexandria, Egypt in May 2016, but he and his family have my deepest gratitude for helping me take the first few steps on this journey. I must thank Brigadier Alasdair Wild, Helen Flewker and Salah Taha, who accompanied me on the road-trip to Majma‘a and Jirab and shared my interest in Shakespear – or at least humoured me. I am also thankful for the wonderful hospitality that was afforded to us all that day by Fahad al-Muraykhi, the local governor and the people of Jirab who continue to tell the story.

None of this would have been possible, however, without the unwavering support of my wife, Nichola, and daughters, Bethany and Lauren. They have always been with me, including four years together in Saudi Arabia where this journey began.

FOREWORD

Captain Shakespear is a familiar figure to any British diplomat or soldier who has served in Saudi Arabia. As Alan Dillon points out in his introduction, this is because the Al Sa‘ud themselves have never forgotten him. The last son of King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, the Founder of the third Saudi state (often known as Ibn Sa‘ud), who could have met Shakespear, died 30 years ago. But all ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s sons would have heard about him from their father. The current king, Salman, frequently reminisces about Shakespear with British visitors, as did his predecessor, ‘Abd Allah. That is remarkable. Equally remarkable is how few people in his own country know anything about him at all. TE Lawrence is famous. Gertrude Bell is romanticised by Hollywood. And yet of all the extraordinary men and women who worked to promote British interests in the Middle East and North Africa before, during, and after the First World War, Shakespear is the one of the few who, by his own lights and the standards of the day, got it right. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, not the Hashimites of the Hejaz or the pro-Ottoman Rashids of Ha’il, was the future.

This alone makes him important. And Dillon tells his story more extensively in this book than anyone has done before. In doing so, he shows why a study of history is essential for anyone who wishes to understand the contemporary Arab world. Through Shakespear’s stirring story, he vividly depicts a period when the modern Middle East was shaped – and some of the individuals who helped shape it. These were not simply British imperialists. They were Ottomans, Persians, Germans, French and above all Arabs themselves. When people now talk about Sykes–Picot, a plan that was never adopted and never implemented, they simply ignore the way in which the region we see today was formed through conflict, through personal relationships and through negotiation among all the parties concerned at a time when global power was already shifting in unexpected ways, a process accelerated by the outbreak of a general European war in 1914 that resonated in the remotest parts of the Arabian, Syrian and Mesopotamian deserts.

Dillon brings this alive by using as many of Shakespear’s own words as possible. And by doing so he illustrates the sheer determination, resilience and skill of a generation of British officers and civilians who dedicated their lives to working in and understanding some of the most challenging and complex regions of the world and their inhabitants. That they represented the British Empire goes without saying. But – as we know also from Lawrence and Miss Bell and indeed from Sir Percy Cox and others – they constantly sought as far as they could to match its interests to those of the people among whom they worked.

It is long out of fashion to say so, but for all their faults, it is hard not to admire people like Shakespear. The British Empire is long gone. But the issues with which he and ‘Abd al-‘Aziz grappled, often together – what it means to create understanding between countries, peoples and cultures; how to manage conflicting territorial claims in the Middle East, often advanced in the name of religion; what the relationship is between the interior and the coast of the Arabian Peninsula; what the appropriate balance is between the peninsula and Mesopotamia; where Yemen fits in; and above all how outsiders should understand the region in general – remain vital.

To understand the Middle East, you need to understand its history. When Shakespear died in battle in January 1915, his part in that history ended. But he is remembered to this day by those who in the end did most to shape that history, because the part he had played was important to them: he was almost the only British official who saw clearly what was happening in the Nejd and understood its significance. He was able to do so because he spoke the language, understood and sympathised with the culture and took his time to make himself trusted. He was also a brave man. These are all ideal attributes of a good diplomat. In this age of instant communication and pared-down diplomatic services, he should be an example to all of us.

SIR JOHN JENKINS KCMG LVO, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO

THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA 2012–2015

PREFACE

Our Land Cruisers made light work of Route 65 as we drove with the early-morning traffic from Riyadh’s Diplomatic Quarter to Majma‘a, a city on the northern extremities of Riyadh Province. The roads were surprisingly clear of the crazy and unexplainable episodes that always seemed to dog even the shortest of commutes, allowing us to cover the 120-mile leg in just over two hours. In the absence of any recognisable music on the few radio stations that then broadcast in the Kingdom, background noise was provided by our air-conditioning systems as they gushed ice-cold air to keep the punishing mid-September heat at bay.

I had planned the visit for some time with Dr ‘Abd Allah al-‘Askar, former Professor of History at King Saud University. ‘Abd Allah’s grandfather was the former governor of Majma‘a who had served loyally under Emir Ibn Sa‘ud and had met Captain Shakespear several times in the Nejdi desert. Al-‘Askar had also entertained Shakespear at his house and ‘Abd Allah was keen to take me to the anteroom where the captain had puffed away on his pipe in his grandfather’s company a hundred years before. At the last minute, ‘Abd Allah could no longer accompany us, so arranged for his nephew to be our guide.

Old Majma‘a town seemed at odds with the modern residential sprawl that now encircled it. A small fort dominated the high ground overlooking the old town, which was now little more than a rubble-strewn cluster of persimmon-coloured mud houses separated by narrow, dusty, high-walled alleyways, all protected by an even higher defensive perimeter wall and ramparts. The only escape from the claustrophobia within the walls was a small garden that had at one time been put aside for passing travellers. It was surprisingly fertile, with date palms and a few lush green plants, and was served by a wooden-framed well that had long since fallen into disrepair.

I am not sure what ‘Abd Allah’s nephew made of us as we strolled through the buildings, all of which seemed to be in various states of refurbishment and repair, or why we seemed to dwell so long at his great-grandfather’s house. We were guideless after we left Majma‘a’s city limits for the small town of Jirab, our next destination, although we were adequately supported by our in-vehicle satellite navigation systems, which required little intelligence of the local or human environment beyond inputting the desired destination, pressing ‘go’ and following the arrow. Forty-five minutes later, we turned left at al-Artawiyya, a small town north of Majma‘a, and picked up the lesser-travelled sweeping dogleg road west that would eventually take us to our final destination.

By now, the surrounding landscape had failed us. The foreground, hinterland and horizon from our left flank to our right had flat-lined. There was a dearth of any local features or striking landmarks to stimulate our minds; no stunning burnt-orange, windswept sand-dunes, ancient building remnants or rugged scars to strike us with awe or inspire discussion. A lone camel crossing the road nonchalantly ahead of us was the only source of light relief from the monotony that had already begun to set in as we continued on our bearing.

When we arrived at Jirab an hour and a half later, our vehicles were rushed by the local governor and his sons and nephews, who welcomed us with genuine warmth, all courtesy of ‘Abd Allah’s fixing skills and contacts. We were immediately ushered to the main majlis¹ tent to escape the afternoon heat, where the rest of the welcoming party was wisely loitering. Red-and-black patterned throws and rugs decorated the tent, while cubed cushions placed at regular intervals around the walls gave us some indication of where we were expected to sit. Framed pictures of Ibn Sa‘ud and his sons – ‘Abd Allah the then King, and Salman the Crown Prince – took pride of place on one of the walls. Tucked away in a corner, a large air-conditioning unit kept the climate comfortable as we sipped our thimble-sized cups of English-mustard-coloured Arabic coffee and made small talk with our hosts. Once the pleasantries were deemed over by the governor, we were asked to return to our vehicles to follow some of the young men in their pick-up truck. We were soon back in the desert wilderness and after breaching the crest of a slight of dead ground, the plateau opened up ahead of us, revealing the location of the bloody affair. But why were we even there?

My interest in Shakespear began in 2012. I was working in the British Embassy in Riyadh at the time and had accompanied my ambassador on a call with the then Crown Prince Salman to discuss various current affairs. The Crown Prince bore a striking resemblance to his father, Ibn Sa‘ud, whose framed image was again the main feature in the meeting room. It was also immediately evident that he shared many of his father’s other mannerisms. Rather than a short burst of pleasantries before beginning the meeting in earnest, Salman opened with a lengthy monologue, reflecting warmly from memory about the historic relations that existed between the two kingdoms and recalling his father’s various encounters with Shakespear, Philby and Churchill. It was not the first time that I had heard this preamble but later, as I flicked through scribbled notes to decide how best to relay the meeting’s outcome to London, I felt a little discomfited. Although I knew of Philby’s three decades of service as an adviser to Ibn Sa‘ud after the Great War and of Churchill’s fractious encounter with the emir at Hotel Auberge du Lac at Lake Qaroun in the final months of the Second World War, I really did not know enough about the significance of Shakespear in Saudi Arabia’s history.

Beyond an article in the magazine of the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, the Internet offered little to lessen my relative ignorance. A few English- and Arabic-language publications carried the odd reference to Shakespear, but it was H V F Winstone’s literary work that soon became my primary source of reference in understanding more about the political agent’s life and his eventual relationship with the Saudi emir. The book had been thoroughly researched but Winstone was all too aware of its limitations. He had cautiously caveated his work by presenting it as a portrait rather than a biography, as he had been unable to gain access to most of Shakespear’s records, considering them to have been buried too deep in the India Office’s extensive archives to be retrieved. I had some sympathy for Winstone as it can be something of a black art to navigate successfully through official records. When I started to work my own way through the files to look beyond his work, I was thankfully more familiar with our antiquated filing systems, having joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when we still had hardcopy registries. The bureaucratic habit of duplication and triplication of registered documents, typically in the most obscurely titled dust-cover files, always gave me hope to find documents that might have evaded Winstone. It was more of a challenge not to get distracted by other interesting but totally irrelevant strands of historical reporting when I camped out for prolonged periods at the British Library to explore the India Office papers. At the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) it became more personal, as I was able to handle Shakespear’s sweat-stained field notebooks, to pore over a small clutch of his personal papers and to scan his photographic collection. Historians at both of his schools helped me understand just a little bit more about his youth. I also had a telephone conversation and email exchange with a distant niece, who clearly shared her relative’s DNA for adventure and exploration as she told me of her own expedition following one of Shakespear’s routes from Jordan through Saudi Arabia to Kuwait in a Land Rover. With ‘Abd Allah’s help, I was able to speak to other Saudis who were able to add a little more colour to Shakespear’s time with Ibn Sa‘ud, all of which culminated in the air-conditioned tent in Jirab, where the governor practised the oral tradition of recalling the battle as told to him by his uncle, who had fought at the encounter.

The more I researched, the more I was encouraged by others to expand on Winstone’s work. I was eventually persuaded to write a book about the political agent; but if Winstone considered his memoir to be a portrait, I wanted mine to be a landscape, providing greater depth and breadth to the personal relationship between Shakespear and Ibn Sa‘ud while also capturing the various historic interactions that had occurred between the British Empire and Ibn Sa‘ud’s forefathers. I also wanted to address some assumptions that are typically held about the Middle Eastern theatre of the Great War. I felt obligated to correct the narrative so that the reader understood that the war went far beyond the horrors of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign and the siege of Kut or the romance of T E Lawrence’s tribal warfare in the Hejaz. There were countless other small wars and skirmishes in the Arabian Peninsula that also needed to be accounted; tales of other loyal government officials and soldiers who operated in the unforgiving Arabian deserts, living heroically by their wits to support the British war effort against Ottoman and German military forces and intrigue. This is Shakespear’s story.

1: THE TREATY OF DARIN

The recently requisitioned packet-ship HMS Lawrence navigated a careful passage down through the Shatt al-‘Arab’s brackish inner channel, slowly closing in on the mouth of the Mesopotamian river that opens up into the Persian Gulf – or Arabian Gulf, depending on one’s geographical persuasion. It was late December 1915 and the Lawrence’s skipper was acting on orders to embark Sir Percy Cox, the Government of India’s Chief Political Officer, Indian Expeditionary Force D, from Basra and take him to Tarut, a small sparsely populated island that sat just offshore from Qatif in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Tarut had been chosen because of its seclusion from the mainland, where spies and enemies in the pay of the Ottoman Empire lurked. The voyage took a couple of days, allowing Cox plenty of time to prepare for his meeting with Ibn Sa‘ud, the Emir of Riyadh, who had just established a tented encampment at Darin, one of the settlements in the south-east of the island. Cox and Ibn Sa‘ud had corresponded regularly over the years but this was the first time that they had been able to meet each other. Ibn Sa‘ud was already hosting Major Terence Keyes, the political agent in Bahrain who had been with him since 21 December. They had been locked in negotiations for five days, each hoping to agree the terms of a treaty that would formalise relations between the British Empire and the Ruler of Nejd, al-Hasa, Qatif and Jubail before Cox’s arrival. By the time the Lawrence arrived off the Tarut coast on 26 December and disembarked Cox, the treaty articles had been agreed by both parties.

While Cox enjoyed Ibn Sa‘ud’s hospitality ashore, he noticed that the emir was nursing a slight wound to one of his hands, which he had received during a clash with the ‘Ajman tribe in July,² possibly as a result of a bullet. Although the wound appeared to be healing nicely and the emir in good health, the fight had not gone well for Ibn Sa‘ud as his brother, Sa‘ad, had been killed.³ These were troubling times for Ibn Sa‘ud. Despite the auspicious occasion, the discussion throughout was frank and straightforward, devoid of emotion as Cox and the emir discussed the ongoing campaign against the ‘Ajman tribe, the Ottoman Empire and its local proxies, and the likely fate of the caliphate if the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Out of sight, British and Arab scribes were taking meticulous care to write out two identical copies of the proposed treaty, one of which would remain with Ibn Sa‘ud, while the other would be sent back to Delhi to be registered alongside the other treaties and formal letters of agreement. Four large sheets of fortified paper were used to capture in duplicate the contents of the treaty; the treaty’s preamble and the seven agreed articles were written in English on the left-hand side, mirrored on the right in Arabic.

Once the ink had dried and the writers were confident in their accuracy, the two documents were presented to Cox and Ibn Sa‘ud, who both took their time to read the contents. While Cox was able to read the text in both English and Arabic, Ibn Sa‘ud required the aid of one of his interpreters to confirm the scribe’s work. Once satisfied, Cox signed the documents, adding the title ‘Political Resident in the Persian Gulf’, a position that he had actually relinquished a year before. It was a slight anomaly as he outranked the current incumbent, who was only officiating, but only he had the explicit backing of both the British and Indian governments to see the negotiations through, regardless of the title that he intended to deploy. Ibn Sa‘ud decided against using his full name, signing the treaty simply as ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, and to confirm his signature he inked his personal seal and pressed it hard onto the paper under his name.

The treaty document itself was a simple affair. There was no gold crest or decoration of the Indian Government at the head of the paper or blood-red embossment to match Ibn Sa‘ud’s personal seal, although neither signatory seemed to be concerned with its presentation. Both understood that it was only a temporary agreement, rushed through during the First World War, and would be revisited once peace had returned. The last article was explicit in this fact, stating that ‘The British Government and Bin Saud agree to conclude a further detailed treaty in regard to matters concerning the two parties’. On 18 July 1916, Frederic Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford – Viceroy and Governor-General of India – added his signature to the Indian Government’s copy, having ratified the treaty in the Indian Council in Simla that day.

The treaty was not the only reason Cox and Ibn Sa‘ud had agreed to meet in Darin. Ibn Sa‘ud desperately needed to secure financial and material support from the British to help him keep their shared enemy, the Ibn Rashid, and their loyal tribes at bay. If Ibn Sa‘ud lacked the means to fight them, they would be free to support the Ottoman Caliph’s call for jihad and take the fight to British and Empire troops in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Cox, in turn, was confident that, in complying with Ibn Sa‘ud’s request for assistance, the emir would be steadfast in his alliance with the British throughout the Great War.⁴ He agreed to give Ibn Sa‘ud a soft loan of 300,000 rupees (£20,000),⁵ along with some field guns, high explosive and shrapnel shells, rifles and ammunition, to help him pursue their mutual adversaries. The British too were desperate and needed a commitment from Ibn Sa‘ud that he would use his own influence over the tribes to protect Basra’s flank and to douse any jihadi sparks that might rouse dissidence in parts of the empire. The treaty helped achieve these ends, but so did responding to Ibn Sa‘ud’s need for gold and guns. That evening, Cox returned to HMS Lawrence, now accompanied by Keyes and the signed treaty, and immediately set sail for Bahrain. Ibn Sa‘ud returned to the al-Hasa mainland the following morning, carrying his own copy of the accord.

The treaty articles were also rather simple, but sufficient in their purpose. It had taken just 11 months to see the draft treaty through to completion, despite negotiations mostly taking place by couriered correspondence between Ibn Sa‘ud’s ever-changing location and Bahrain. Although both sides had at times expressed their disagreement over the use of some of the suggested language, there was little of substance that differentiated the first draft from the signed version. In addition to providing a placeholder for a more substantial treaty to be agreed later,⁶ the document formally recognised Ibn Sa‘ud as the independent ruler of the domains already under his governance and those yet to be determined. It also confirmed that the British Government would come to Ibn Sa‘ud’s aid if he was threatened by a foreign power, although it was not explicit in the use of force, while Ibn Sa‘ud would refrain from any aggression or interference in the affairs of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the Trucial states, which were also British allies. Ibn Sa‘ud would also refrain from any form of dialogue with foreign powers and agreed to inform the British of any approach from another nation. He would also ‘absolutely not’, under any circumstances, give any concessions to a foreign power and agreed to protect the pilgrimage routes passing through his territories.

From Ibn Sa‘ud’s rise to power in 1902 to 1913, he made 11 overtures to various offices in the British and Indian governments, seeking protection and a security guarantee. Each time he was rebuffed, sometimes because the explicit nature of the request was lost in translation, at others because there were few officials or ministers in London who were prepared to champion Ibn Sa‘ud above the Al Rashid, the other dominant ruling family in central Arabia. He simply did not sit within Britain’s regional sphere of influence, and it was not until he managed to seize control and governance of some coastline in 1913 that he began to arouse their interest, given their commitment to a regional maritime treaty that had been in force for nearly a century. Ibn Sa‘ud’s later requests for a formal pact also clashed with Britain’s own ongoing treaty negotiations with the Ottoman Empire. There was no chance of the Foreign Office in London agreeing to any additional negotiations in the margins, particularly given that Ibn Sa‘ud was recognised, by the Ottoman Government at least, to be one of their subjects. Cox was one of only a few who understood the value of maintaining a close relationship with Ibn Sa‘ud. It was a deduction that had been informed by numerous reports he had received from his network of political officers posted to prominent coastal cities scattered around the region, although mostly from Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, who had previously served as the Government of India’s Political Agent in Kuwait.

Shakespear had been in the Kuwait sheikhdom since 1909, and from his first encounter with Ibn Sa‘ud in early 1910 he had recognised something special – unique, even – in the desert chieftain. Shakespear had made few friends or allies in Whitehall over his persistence in championing Ibn Sa‘ud, and many were relieved be rid of the irritant when his posting there came to an end in January 1914 and he returned to London. Twelve months later, Shakespear was back in the Gulf and firmly embedded in Ibn Sa‘ud’s camp somewhere in the Nejdi desert, this time with the full backing of the foreign secretary and the India secretary. In just a decade, British foreign policy towards the interior of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Al Sa‘ud in particular, had changed considerably. Its long-established position of non-interference had been reinforced with a policy of deliberate avoidance and denial of existence, but was now one of the pursuit of active engagement. Shakespear, too, was no longer a pariah but carrying the hopes of the policy and war planners to rally the Arab tribes against the Ottoman Empire – which had just allied itself to Germany in the Great War – or at least to confirm their neutrality. This was not without risk. Shakespear, Ibn Sa‘ud and the emir’s mass of warriors manoeuvred almost daily in the desert, waiting for the right moment to strike against another powerful chieftain, Ibn Rashid, and his equally mobilised tribal army that was equipped with modern weapons and vast quantities of ammunition provided by their German and Ottoman sponsors.

In between their tactical bounds, the political agent took full licence of the mission that he had been given to liaise with the emir and they began to work together on an outline of a treaty, which would be the first of its kind between them. Once they were both happy with the thrust of the language, Shakespear drafted a comprehensive covering note, justifying again the benefits of establishing formal relations. Hundreds of miles away from the nearest friendly telegraph station, camel riders were called forward to courier the original despatch to Cox in Basra, with a second copy, courtesy of carbon paper, to the officiating resident in Bushire so that it could be transmitted to the Indian Government for consideration. Eleven months later, Cox was finishing off what Shakespear had begun.

2: FAMILY HISTORY, YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP

The Anglo-Indian gentry and assorted servants of the Crown drew hard on their pipes and cheroots, filling the parlours of the United Services Club⁷ in Simla with hazy blue tobacco smoke that swirled and marbled in the temperate summer air. They were loitering with intent, waiting to be invited forward to hear their viceroy’s valedictory speech. It was 30 September 1905 and George Curzon, the Right Honourable Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, Knight Grand Commander of both the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India and the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, had just submitted his resignation to the Government of India. This sojourn to the summer retreat was part of his final tour of Britain’s most prized asset before he placed it in the hands of his successor, Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto⁸ and the second from the Minto clan to govern British India. As Curzon looked back on his service as the custodian of India since his appointment in 1899, a grand assignment that had seen him successfully manage a policy of reconciliation with the tribes of the troubled North-West Frontier, through force if required, he took a moment to reflect to his captive audience, the most favoured component of his small⁹ yet proficient government:

Perhaps I may be allowed to interpolate a word in this place about the particular branch of the service of which I have been more especially the head – I allude to the Political Department. The Viceroy, as taking the Foreign Office under his personal charge, has a greater responsibility for the officers of that Department than of any other. A good Political is a type of officer difficult to train. Indeed training by itself will never produce him. For there are required in addition qualities of tact and flexibility, of moral fibre and gentlemanly bearing, which are an instinct rather than an acquisition. The public at large hardly realises what the Political may be called upon to do. At one moment he may be grinding in the Foreign Office, at another he may be required to stiffen the administration of a backward Native State, at a third he may be presiding over a jirga of unruly tribesmen on the frontier, at a fourth he may be demarcating a boundary amid the wilds of Tibet or the sands of Seistan. There is no more varied or responsible service in the world than the Political Department of the Government of India; and right well have I been served in it, from the mature and experienced officer who handles a Native Chief with velvet glove, to the young military political who packs up his trunks at a moment’s notice and goes off to Arabia or Kurdistan. I commend the Political Department of the Government of India to all who like to know the splendid and varied work of which Englishmen are capable: and I hope that the time may never arise when it will cease to draw to itself the best abilities and the finest characters that the services in India can produce.¹⁰

The genesis of Curzon’s emotional gasconade and admiration for the rather particular cut of Englishman that was best placed to serve in British India’s isolated frontiers can be traced back to the dawn of the 17th century. In December 1600 Queen Elizabeth I declared that, in honour of her nation and for the wealth of her people, a licence should be awarded to the Governor and the Company of Merchants of London