Related: Mocha.
An excerpt from, "Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East" by Jonathan Parry, Princeton University Press, 2022, Pg. 98 - 101:
The Bombay authorities had been concerned about "pirate" attacks on Gulf shipping for over fifteen years. 'These attacks were generally blamed on the Qawasim (usually called Joasmees by the British), the trading Arabs based at Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah on the south-eastern Gulf coast, who in the 1760s had also taken territory on the opposite, Persian shore. There was a history of rivalry between the major tribes engaged in trade within and outside the Gulf, and the Qawasim's main aim was to take trade away from the independent port city of Muscat, which had become the major commercial force on the western Indian Ocean seaboard on account of Omani trading connections with India and the East African coast. How far this trade warfare deserved the name "piracy" is a moot point, but Bombay used the term in justifying action to protect its merchants who traded with the Gulf. Since 1686, the EIC had operated a naval force, the Bombay Marine, primarily to safeguard merchant shipping. This was not easy, since the Marine had only a dozen ships, and Bombay was very reluctant to get drawn into disputes between Arab tribes.
After 1798, two problems complicated the politics of the Gulf from Bombay's perspective. One was fear that France might seek to build up local infuence, particularly in Muscat, which Napoleon had openly courted in 1799. The other was that the Qawasim began to pay tribute to the Wahhabi and accept their protection, making the latter a force in Gulf politics. The imam of Muscat was determined to keep his independence from all parties, and could see the benefits of playing Britain and France off against each other. Moreover, the climate there was appalling for Britons: four residents died between 1800 and 1809. From 1810, the idea of a permanent agent in Muscat was abandoned in favour of hoping that, now that France had been deprived of its Mauritius naval base, the lucrative trade between Muscat and Bombay would keep the imam sufficiently loyal to Britain. From 1803 onwards, the growth of Wahhabi and Qasimi power on Muscat's borders had offered Britain--or potentially France---the chance to protect it against its rivals. British agents toyed with offering Muscat this protection from time to time, but Bombay decided it did not want to take sides against the Wahhabi. It gravitated instead towards the idea of trying to secure a regional balance between the previously dominant Muscat and its new challengers, which would give the Bombay Marine a recognised role in the Gulf. This became its default policy in the years to come. In 1799, Duncan in Bombay, Jones, and Manesty had already cooperated to apply British pressure to settle a dispute between Baghdad and Muscat. The resolution of the dispute allowed the imam to turn his attention to another of his objectives---an attack on the wealthy island of Bahrain. This was a reminder that local enmities were almost impossible to suppress entirely.
The imam of Muscat was killed in battle against the Wahhabi in 1804. This increased Qasimi power in the Gulf: they now took Hormuz and Bandar Abbas as well as Qishm, and so controlled its entrance. In December 1804, they captured two ships belonging to Manesty. In Bombay, Duncan ordered his resident in Muscat, David Seton, to cooperate with the new ruler of Muscat against the Qawasim only if he was sure that it would not offend the Wahhabi. Seton coordinated his tactics with Manesty, who was keen to reach an understanding with the Wahhabi, not least to protect his own trading fleet. In February 1806, Seton secured a treaty with the Qawasim in which they pledged to respect EIC property and restore one of Manesty's ships. The presence of a British Gulf squadron during the crisis of 1807 also helped to keep the peace locally. However in late 1808, the Qawasim---now hunting in flotillas of up to twenty vessels-- increased their activities, and attacked over a dozen merchant vessels from Bombay, as well as the Sylph, a Bombay Marine ship. It was ceremonially purified with rose water and a number of crew members were killed before the rest were rescued. In May 1809, Manesty's country ship Minerva was intercepted after a fierce battle. Since some of the attackers were killed, forty-five of the (mostly Lascar Indian) crew had their throats cut in revenge, to the cry of "Allah Akbar." The women on board--the young Armenian wife of Robert Taylor, then stationed at Bushehr, her female servant, and her baby- were taken to Ras al-Khaimah, but then bought by a contact friendly to the British, and finally rescued.
Now Bombay could no longer ignore demands for reprisals, owing to merchant anger and to a concern that the regional balance had swung so far towards the Wahhabi that Muscat's survival was endangered. This was also the period of maximum concern about French influence in Persia, and potential French regional dominance. All this explains the attempt to show British might by bombarding Ras al-Khaimah in November 1809. Even so, Bombay did not want to antagonise the Wahhabi, especially as they seemed likely to become the major regional player if the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The expedition was a purely naval one to teach the Qawasim a lesson: Ras al-Khaimah was badly damaged, but the soldiers then withdrew, in order to avoid clashes with land forces supposedlv coming to reinforce it. Though several dozen Qasimi dhows were destroyed, this was only a small percentage of the fleet; the rest had been hidden.
The Wahhabi leader Saud urged a truce and promised not to molest British ships. The truce continued uneasily for six years. Saud died in 1814. By 1815. Qasimi attacks on other traders en route to India, in the Gulf and Indian Ocean, were so frequent that Bombay's naval authority seemed in peril. Moreover, in 1816, the Qasimi chief announced that only English Christians would henceforth be exempt from his attacks, not Indian merchants; this was plainly unacceptable to the traders of Surat and Bombay. In 1818, planning began in India for a major attack on Qasimi strongholds.
This bold step was possible because several things had changed. The Napoleonic Wars had ended without the Ottoman Empire collapsing. Instead, the local balance of forces between the Ottomans and the Wahhabi had shifted in the former's favour, because since 1810 Mechmet Ali of Egypt had been reducing Wahhabi power in the Hijaz and central Arabia. Mehmet Ali had been ordered to attack the Wahhabi by Sultan Mahmud, who probably hoped that a tough struggle in inhospitable climes would preoccupy both sides for many years and limit the danger to the Porte from either of them. By 1816, the Wahhabi were penned into their Arabian heartland, and had no capacity for aggression for the foreseeable future. In view of their new weakness, the greater danger was that continuing disorder in the Gulf would damage Britain's prestige and her local commercial relationships. A continuation of disruption would damage "our interests in Egypt and in the Pachalic of Bagdad but also at the Ottoman Court." In 1818, finally, Mehmet Ali's son Ibrahim reached Diriyya and captured the Wahhabi leaders, including their new chief Abdullah. He was sent to Constantinople with two followers, where they were forced to listen to the lute, against all their principles, and then beheaded. Rich's idea of an alliance with Abdullah was, to the benefit of his reputation, lost to history. Harford Jones later suggested that the "atheist Turk" Mehmet Ali had been able to suppress the Wahhabi threat, temporarily, only by betraying his word on several occasions, and by repeatedly bribing Bedouin tribes.
The destruction of the Wahhabi threat gave the Indian government the chance to strike at the Qawasim, while the end of the Mahratta wars freed up enough soldiers for a powerful expedition. In October 1819, 2,800 European and Indian troops set sail in three warships and seventeen transports under Sir William Grant Keir. They completely destroyed Ras al-Khaimah in December, and the fortifications and larger ships in most of the nearby ports, with the loss of five British soldiers and four hundred killed or wounded Qawasim. A garrison of 800 troops was left at Ras al-Khaimah. A treaty was negotiated with the Qawasim, which in the course of 1820 was broadened into a "General Treaty" on Gulf piracy signed by most of the Arab chiefs. This outlawed piracy and bound the chiefs to register their trading ships under the same flag. If they kept the terms of the treaty, they would be free to trade with British ports. Britain would, if necessary, coordinate the punishment of any pirate attacks. This was the beginning of the Trucial system of British protection of the Gulf chiefs, which was to make Britain dominant there. However, the initial intention was for only a limited intervention. The treaty gave the Bombay Marine no right of search; it was implied that tribes would resolve their petty disputes themselves, because of the "state of equilibrium" between them secured by the British.
Ibrahim Pasha (1789 – 10 November 1848) was an Egyptian general and politician; he was the commander of both the Egyptian and Ottoman armies and the eldest son of Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman WΔli and unrecognized Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. He was the second ruler of Egypt from the Muhammad Ali dynasty and ruled from 20 July 1848 to 10 November 1848.
. . .Muhammad Ali had already begun to introduce European discipline into his army, and Ibrahim had probably received some training, but his first campaign was conducted more in the old Asiatic style than his later operations. The campaign lasted two years, and ended in the destruction of the House of Saud as a political power. Muhammad Ali landed at Yanbu, the port of Medina, in 1813. The holy cities had been recovered from the Saudis, and Ibrahim's task was to follow them into the desert of Nejd and destroy their fortresses. Such training as the Egyptian troops had received, and their artillery, gave them a marked superiority in the open field. But the difficulty of crossing the desert to the Saudis stronghold of Diriyah, some 400 miles east of Medina, made the conquest a very arduous one. By the end of September 1818 he had forced the Saudi leader Abdullah bin Saud to surrender, and had taken Diriyah, which he sacked. Ibrahim pasha was called in Egyptian “Qahir Al Wahhabiyyin” (annihilator of the wahhabis) for his brutality against Wahhabis.
